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The 2025 Ebor Handicap

edgt said:
Some 1-2 for sire Awtaad.
These are also his two best hurdlers (so far) rated 143 and 135 with few enough winners in that sphere so no guarantee they will jump a fence.
They do like their racing and get better with age; at 5K he must be the best value sire around at the moment.
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Nice observation, Eddie.
 
Ethical Diamond is flat bred, by a miler out of a miler. He shouldn’t be winning staying races but he does. Even so, I don’t see him as a candidate to go over fences, generally speaking you need at least a spoonful of old fashioned NH genes to make a success of chasing.

Regarding the County Hurdle, is it not overrated as a race? It’s highly competitive, yes. But It’s not especially valuable, and from here to March is too long a wait, even for the most patient of trainers?

I’d be looking at what might be picked up on the flat before the season ends.
 
Grey said:
Regarding the County Hurdle, is it not overrated as a race? It’s highly competitive, yes. But It’s not especially valuable, and from here to March is too long a wait, even for the most patient of trainers?

I’d be looking at what might be picked up on the flat before the season ends.
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It's not especially valuable in prize money terms, its not even that prestigious as a race or at least it shouldn't be. The polarisation between everything National Hunt racing and Cheltenham has meant every Cheltenham winner is immensely valuable even to Willie who's had plenty more than his share in recent years. You need look no further than this thread, its the middle of August and we're folk just insane enough to be trying to figure out the winner of that very same not too valuable handicap in the middle of March. It won't be long before we will all trying to figure out which JP plot is going to win, I'll call it the "Schweppes" for all the old feckers who cant keep up with the sponsorships. As Slim has alluded to, when every man and his dog is going in one direction its usually pays to go in the other.

For me its a long way off the horse would certainly open up favourite in a 20 something runner handicap but prior to the 48 hour decs will be entered in every race along with half of Closutton. These days id rather spend the week leading up to the festival finding whats most likely to beat it once its been driven into a ridiculous price to win a race it couldnt win this year.

The festival has lost its magic for me with the complete domination by Mullins of the event and everyone talking about it from the first day of the season and overlooking the rest of the NH calender. I still do love the festival as a betting platform though.
 
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Danny said:
It's not especially valuable in prize money terms, its not even that prestigious as a race or at least it shouldn't be. The polarisation between everything National Hunt racing and Cheltenham has meant every Cheltenham winner is immensely valuable even to Willie who's had plenty more than his share in recent years. You need look no further than this thread, its the middle of August and we're folk just insane enough to be trying to figure out the winner of that very same not too valuable handicap in the middle of March. It won't be long before we will all trying to figure out which JP plot is going to win, I'll call it the "Schweppes" for all the old feckers who cant keep up with the sponsorships. As Slim has alluded to, when every man and his dog is going in one direction its usually pays to go in the other.

For me its a long way off the horse would certainly open up favourite in a 20 something runner handicap but prior to the 48 hour decs will be entered in every race along with half of Closutton. These days id rather spend the week leading up to the festival finding whats most likely to beat it once its been driven into a ridiculous price to win a race it couldnt win this year.

The festival has lost its magic for me with the complete domination by Mullins of the event and everyone talking about it from the first day of the season and overlooking the rest of the NH calender. I still do love the festival as a betting platform though.
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Funnily enough, as I was reading the IMO perfectly-valid and accurate points Grey was making, I was nevertheless thinking similar things to those Danny expresses equally well IMO here.

There are more valuable races than the County Hurdle, and there are various valuable races during the Jumps season before and after it (and that's leaving aside all the Flat opportunities in the interim).

But the County is at the Cheltenham Festival, which increasingly dominates the Jumping landscape to the extent it now blots out all the big Saturday Jumps races which were once a feature of the season.

Willie Mullins has won the race eight - Thousand Stars (2010), Final Approach (2011), Wicklow Brave (2015), Arctic Fire (2017), Saint Roi (2020), State Man (2022), Absurde (2024), Kargese (2025) - times....and I think he will be after a ninth next March.

Whether that will be with Ethical Diamond remains to be seen, but the way I convert Flat numbers to Jumps and vice versa he'd be thrown in off OR 143 on Saturday's Ebor form and, with the qualifying run criteria having changed since State Man, Mullins nowadays has limited options to produce a snip for the race by other means.
 
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Grey said:
Regarding the County Hurdle, is it not overrated as a race? It’s highly competitive, yes. But It’s not especially valuable, and from here to March is too long a wait, even for the most patient of trainers?
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The County is worth £120k, making it one of the most valuable handicap hurdles of the season plus it's a Cheltenham festival race and targeted arguably even more, especially by the Irish trainers, than the likes of the more valuable Schweppes Hurdle. It's a very hard race to win, unless you're Willie Mullins.

Ireland has a couple of more valuable handicap hurdles, I think, and they don't strike me as being as competitive as the County.

I think plenty of people are happy to wait a year for a Cheltenham race, and not just Irish people. The Skeltons have one or two plotted up every year and Nicholls showed with one of his this season that he is prepared to do likewise.

But, as I said in an earlier post, there has to be a fair chance that Willie already has the County booked for something other than Ethical Diamond, some bandit he knows is a 160 horse and he'll get it in off something like 135!
 
There is no doubt that the County Hurdle is one of the major handicap hurdles of the season but I don't think it would be worth waiting seven months with a horse as good as Ethical Diamond to run in it. There are one or two very valuable staying races in the Middle East during the winter months, including a 15f handicap in Riyadh worth more than a million quid to the winner in late February. I'd be having a look at one of those if it were my horse.
 
Grey said:
There is no doubt that the County Hurdle is one of the major handicap hurdles of the season but I don't think it would be worth waiting seven months with a horse as good as Ethical Diamond to run in it. There are one or two very valuable staying races in the Middle East during the winter months, including a 15f handicap in Riyadh worth more than a million quid to the winner in late February. I'd be having a look at one of those if it were my horse.
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Good point. He's good enough to be competitive in the graded staying races at Meydan. Will get his ideal conditions. Going left handed, good ground etc. I think Willie plundered a big prize over there recently with a filly Hollie Doyle rode, so it's not unchartered territory for him.
 
Just as an ongoing aside, I'd just like to say, on behalf of my good friends Chantelle and Jade (or was it Karen and Kelly?), that we have never enjoyed reading the discussions here at TH more than we are doing at the moment:
 
Grey said:
Ethical Diamond is flat bred, by a miler out of a miler. He shouldn’t be winning staying races but he does. Even so, I don’t see him as a candidate to go over fences, generally speaking you need at least a spoonful of old fashioned NH genes to make a success of chasing.

Regarding the County Hurdle, is it not overrated as a race? It’s highly competitive, yes. But It’s not especially valuable, and from here to March is too long a wait, even for the most patient of trainers?

I’d be looking at what might be picked up on the flat before the season ends.
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No Cheltenham handicap is worth winning but it's what connections want to win.
 
Grey said:
There is no doubt that the County Hurdle is one of the major handicap hurdles of the season but I don't think it would be worth waiting seven months with a horse as good as Ethical Diamond to run in it. There are one or two very valuable staying races in the Middle East during the winter months, including a 15f handicap in Riyadh worth more than a million quid to the winner in late February. I'd be having a look at one of those if it were my horse.
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They said Absurde was going this route last season and he still ended up in the County Hurdle. Connections literally can’t help themselves when it comes to the chance of having a Cheltenham winner.

I wouldn’t look at the seven months as wasted. Willie wouldn’t need to give it a prep. He’d just bring it in from the field a couple of months before March and get it ready. After Cheltenham it then depends on the trainers’ championship and whether the stable needs to be emptied at Ayr and Perth, etc.

Other than that, we’ll be seeing Ethical Diamond back on the flat.
 
Ethical Diamond can run as many times on the Flat as they like without affecting his BHA Hurdles mark.

It's just a question of when his next Jumps appearance will be.

Could be never, but passing up the opportunity to exploit 143?

I mentioned the Greatwood, Slim said they're most likely to wait for the County, and on balance I think Slim is right.
 
The Greatwood is a race that has suffered more than most with the Cheltenham Festival hysteria. It’s purposely not targeted by tier-one Irish trainers. You’re more likely to see an Emmett Mullins or John McConnell runner.

I’m sure we’ve all noticed that the UK trainers are more savvy now too, and that’s going to make a race like the Greatwood worse and worse. Willie could win the race if he wanted to — he just has no interest in winning it.

In the same way, Willie could win every handicap chase at Cheltenham if he wanted, and the stat thrown out every year about his handicap chasers is laughable. He’s not trying to win those races — he’s leaving them behind for an Irish National or soft-graded races and handicaps at Fairyhouse and Punchestown, where the prize money is far better.
 

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