A full explanation would take some time to write up, suffice to say it's based around class pars and race times. Very, very rarely does a staying hurdler hit a grade 1 class par. In every other division I hold records for (12 years now at Cheltenham) the class par is pretty well achieved within 1 or 2 lengths either side of 100. It's really quite amazing just how accurate they are.
It basically involves giving a horse a bit of time back dependent on their class to equalise things with the view to calculating a going correction (track variance in American). It goes without saying that if you used raw times to standard on say a banded card, all of the horses would run below standard because they're essentially not very fast. This could lead you into concluding that the ground was soft, when in actual fact it could be good to firm for example. Therefore it becomes necessary to make an adjustment based on times taken for typical grade 1 animals in their respective division.
Staying chasers
2 mile novice chasers
2 mile chasers
2 mile hurdlers
novice hurdlers
and juvenile hurdlers
The winning performances in all these divisions come out about 1.5L's either side of the designated class par over the period. This is very accurate and points to the class par being reliable. If the pars were wrong, then the spreads indexed at 100 would be much more volatile. The one that does vary a little bit is staying novice chasers, but given that the division is prone to generate more than its fair share of fallers, this is possibly understandable, and in any event it tends to be about 4L's lower than the par, which although not ideal, is bordering on the acceptable.
The one division that consistantly gets no where near its class par however, is the staying hurdlers. Their average figure is 87.51 which means they're typically running about 13L's, below a grade 1 performance per mile. The same class par adjustment (1.1) is used for grade 1 two mile hurdlers, their average by contrast is 99.98 (which at 0.02% equates to a nose).
I've never really satisfied myself as to why this should be? As I said, if the pars were wrong, then it would show up across all the divisions and it would be unpredictable as to where it emerged. The evidence is that it doesn't, and far from sharing it around, there's only one division that consistantly falls below par year after year. Baracouda on 92.85 is the fastest I hold a record for (the same horse also accounts for the slowest, although that is removed from the calculation of the average for reasons of sampling error).
Now anyone familiar with by pontificating on this, will now that I've long harboured a suspicion that a horse (or in terms of winning a world hurdle) a group of horses working as a team, could steal a race if they set out to run a time, by going a strong even pace from start to finish and effectively dragged the others into alien territory which many of them will be unproven at. What I suspect is that a lot of horses running in this division aren't really up to grade 1 standard, even though we accord them this status in name, and a horse that sought to run a race thus, could expose them (it never occured to me the horse might be Lough Derg though) as I felt it was more likely to come from a chaser stepping back.
When looking for an explanation, I've been persuaded to some extent to consider how horses come to staying hurdles? Alot of the best staying prospects, go novice chasing, and the best hurdlers stay at 2 miles as they don't have any incentive to change a winning formula. It stands to reason that the various filter beds that racing kind of imposes on its divisions by proxy, will to some extent ensure that the talent pool is lower in staying hurdlers, as talent is diverted elsewhere. Even two of the most recent winners went novice chasing.
That's not to say that all staying hurdlers are moderate, but rather that some will be, where as a select few probably would be able to run a grade 1 time if they were required to (I suspect Drever could). It is this lack of depth in the division I believe, that potentially allows one or two horses to set up a dynasty and dominate it. That's not to say that other horses haven't imposed similar levels of dominence in their respective divisions, but they usually have a more credible collection of legitimate challengers, making their achievements all the more remarkable.
Without trying to get all existentialist, how do we know the world hurdle features grade 1 horses? because the HRA say's it does? What if the HRA was wrong? The stopwatch certainly suggests that they aren't running grade 1 times, but this throws back another question of course; is the stopwatch a good aribitrator?
I don't know the answer to this one. All I can say, is that it is neutral and doesn't involve basing an opinion around a favourite horse etc The other realted thing of course conerns whether it is necessary to put up a grade 1 performance based purely on time? there are many ways of winning a race afterall. This is also true of course, but I for one would be very interested to see what happened if staying hurdlers were suddenly challenged to run to the same level as their 2 mile counterparts. I suspect a few reputations would be shattered, as they could easily find themselves exposed for the imposters that I think a lot of them are.
It's this that provoked the 'moderately good' observation, and the one that concerned the one eyed woman being queen in the kingdom of the blind. When a staying hurdler finally covers the track in a time consistant with grade 1 performances in the other divisions (as all the others do) then I'll be happy to conceed them their official status, until then however, I harbour reservations regarding their true merit and can't help wondering if we aren't being duped a bit into thinking this division is true grade 1 standard.
I should perhaps add, that the same patern also emerges with staying novice hurdlers, and the early evidence of the brit Insurance hurdle points to the ratio's being prety well the same, although they are assessed of a different grade 1 novice par, Supreme and Sun Alliance Hurdle winners by contrast mirror Champion Hurdlers
