The Cheltenham Going

Cheltenham clerk of the course Simon Claisse admits the ground may be soft on Tuesday.
The weather forecast is now predicting a band of rain on the eve of the Festival which will have a bearing on the going.
"The going is currently good to soft, good in places on both the Old and New courses. We are expecting a couple of mainly dry days with the odd light shower but then rain Monday night into Tuesday morning," Claisse told Channel Four.
"It could be up to half-an-inch which could put us beyond good to soft and into soft ground maybe. If we got a bit more than half-an-inch it could well be soft."
 
Galileo said:
"The going is currently good to soft, good in places on both the Old and New courses."quote]

That would be about right, with a bit more good if today stays dry. We've had 3 frosty starts, but dry, sunny days with a fairly stiff breeze for all 3 days. The sun was warm when the breeze dropped.

A dry weekend would probably see ground more good by Tuesday, but it started to cloud over about 3/4 of an hour ago.
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My own figures tell me that since takign over the job in 2003 I think? Claisse has been pretty well spot on at preparing good ground even if his declarations owe more to PR. I wouldn't take too much notice at this stage to be honest, and see how the first race times pan out. He called it 'soft' when MWDS beat standard don't forget, and in doing so recorded one of the fastets Arkle times in the last 12 years. Only Tuitchev on very fast ground, and Moscow had been quicker.
 
do you think they aren't to careful where they start races from Warbler?...just how accurate are the actual distances from one year to the next?

what time would you want to see the first race run in for smack in the middle GOOD ground?

from my calcs ...smack in middle good ground for the first race should be something like 234 seconds...am I close?
 
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I'm no expert but I'd have thought 3:55-3:57 maybe would be just about good with anything up to 4:01 perhaps being soft side of good and anything below 3:54 being genuine good or perhaps faster.

What do you reckon, Warbler?
 
Good stuff, EC1. I reckon 3:54 would probably be verging on genuine good ground.

What time did Arcalis do it in?
 
I've posted a schedule up elsewhere with times and estimates as to what I think the going will be based on Supreme and Arkle times, (but did it when I was tired and wouldn't swear that I haven't made an error somewhere) the problem is that one time knocks into another and pushes everything back or forward domino style, so if I have made an error it will be a bad one that's compounded. I'm used to dealing in a slightly different currency and haven't always found translating raw time at mile saggregates to par classification over race distance run that easy to compute. Alright, I've been known to overload and get in a ravel with the maths, as I struggle to reverse the calculation from rating, to par, to standard, to time. Also I reckon that the RP might have altered the standard from last year to 3.50.00 and have back calculated everything since using a sliding scale. The result of this is that Tuitchev was alleged to have beaten standard by 16secs or something ridiclious. All historical timings to standard are up in smoke at Cheltenham for the time being on the RP database I reckon. I'm happy to use the old standard of 3.52.00 as my average Supreme winner is 100.03 (about a nose faster than the novice grade 1 par says it should be).

Therefore I'd say that spot on good ground is a time of 3.55.20.

Mind you there's always a danger of relying on the one race of course, and I think you can pretty well use the same guide for the Arkle too. My average rating there is 102.60 suggesting they've been assessed of a more generous par (as an extra 0.3 secs is given back), which the evidence suggests they've started to eat into over the years, where as novice hurdlers have remained plateaued. When these pars were calculated however, there was a clutch of pretty fast hurdlers out pacing the chasers, in recent years (last 6 or 7) their comparative performances have turned around, and I think that's why the chasers have started beating their par. With this in mind, I think you can assess them off the hurdlers par and uses 3.55.20 again.

Remember of course that you can always run a slow time on fast ground, but you can't run a fast tiem on slow ground. If the latter occurs you can only conclude one of three things;

1: The going is wrong and adjust your betting strategy accordingly
2: The horse is exceptional and done it on merit
3: The race distance is badly wrong

I'd start introducing the word 'Soft' at anything above 3.58.00 and 'Firm' at anything below 3.53.00 as a genral guide. I don't deal in language descriptions though, and am more comfortable talking about going in pure numbers now I've become familiar with the scale I've been using and can readily equate it to conditions now.
 
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Arcalis won it in 233 Track

I got the going that day as being about 8lb per mile faster than middle Good...which is still Good though

I think we are all singing from the same hymn sheet then Warbler:thumbsup:
 
I got it +1.35 and normally start using the word firm at +1.75, but would only go something like "GOOD - good to firm in places' for ground at say +1.80, with the predominat call being on the 'good'. +1.35 would be faster side of good in my book
 
Cheltenham (Updated: 8:24)Old Course: Chase and Hurdle, Good to soft, good in places. Cross Country:Good to soft, soft in places. (GoingStick: 6.9(old),5.8 (cross country) on Saturday at 15:30) 1mm overnight. Outlook, showery, a spell of rain overnight Monday/Tuesday, light showers Wednesday/Thursday, dry Friday
 
Galileo said:
Cheltenham (Updated: 8:24)Old Course: Chase and Hurdle, Good to soft, good in places.Cross Country:Good to soft, soft in places.(GoingStick: 6.9(old),5.8 (cross country) on Saturday at 15:30)1mm overnight. Outlook, showery, a spell of rain overnightMonday/Tuesday, light showers Wednesday/Thursday, dry Friday
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Wind and rain arrived about 1/2 hour ago.
 
Ground is now Good To Soft after 3mm of rain today. Must be little doubt now that if the forecast rain tonight and Monday materialises it will be Soft by the first on Tuesday.
 
More rain............ and a setback for Cousin Vinny - that's what's needed. :whistle:
 
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