Regarding the calibre of the horse's contesting staying hurdles;
In the first case I used the plural, although of course accept the thread is ostensibly about MWDS, even though it's inevitable that such debates will ultimately broaden out. Singling out MWDS gave me the germ of idea though.
If Cheltenham is the self-styled 'equine Olympics of jump racing' then its surely not unreasonable to expect the novices who turn up there and contest the grade 1 feature hurdles to be the best emerging talent on offer (fitness permitting)? Now my suspicion about the Staying Hurdle division is that it's the "last station on the line", and thus attracts those horses who haven't been able to "get off elsewhere".
What I've tried to do to illustrate this is take the class of 2005 (MWDS's) and track them through their journey. It is not unreasonable to assume by now, that nearly 3 years on, these novices will have matured and found their level?
The results are quite interesting, and I'd suggest support my hypothesis by virtue of the way the gene pool thins out, with the stayers being the last port of call. Some of the horses mix their assingments between hurdles and fences, and others mix their distances up too, I've tried to reflect however as faithfully as i can how they were campaigned.
Arcalis = Champion Hurdle > County Hurdle; 2 mile Hurdles
Wild Passion = Nov Chs > 2 mile open company > finally stepping up mid dist chases
Dusky Warbler (no relation) = Mid dist H'cap H's > Nov Chasing
Prins Willem = Couple of spins at mid dist H's > predominantly onto the flat there after
Aleron = Nov H's > Flat > H'cap H's > H'cap Chases > finally onto staying H'cap Chases
CHILLING PLACE = Mid dist Nov Chasers > H'Cap H's > Staying H'cap H's
Publican = Chasing > Staying H'cap Chasing
Justified = Nov Chasing > Open Company 2 - 2.5 mile Chasing
Akshar = Flat > a couple of chases > back to the flat & H'caps
Manorson = H'cap H > Chasing
Stan = Nov Chasing > H'cap Chasing predominantly 2 miles
Shuhood = Died Novice chasing shortly after
Marcel = Nov Chasing > Chasing 2 - 2.5 miles
Cherub = H'cap H's > Nov Chasing
MY WAY DE SOLZEN = Staying H's > Nov Chasing > Chasing open company at staying trips
Akhtari = Mid dist H's > Mid dist Nov Chasing > Staying H'cap Chases
Villon = 1 run over fences, dead/ retired?
Perfect Storm = 2 mile H'cap H's > Flat > selling and claiming H's
Only Vintage = Mid dist H'cap H's > staying Nov and H'cap Chasing
Maddiba = A/W H'caps and other low grade affairs on the flat
In short only two horses from this grade 1 field of 20, pursued a line that resulted in them contesting staying hurdles with any sense of regularity and campaign. They finished 6th and 15th respectively. Now if this is typical of the sort of through put, it's hardly surprising that the division ends up being stripped of talent.
I thought I'd role it out to the Sun Alliance Hurdle too. I'll spare you a blow by blow account of the precise routes taken by eahc horse as illustrated above, they can become convuluted a bit, but broadly speaking the horses that contested the 2005 renewal ended up as follows;
Hurdles = 3
Chasing = 16
Flat = 1
By now of course we were blessed with a grade 2 novice hurdle for stayers which has alarmingly been raised to grade 1 this season with no apparent evidence to support it's status (unless of course it's a testimony to BJK norty ). To some extent this represents part of what I'm suggesting, hence my earlier reference to existentialism earlier. I see it, or do I? does it exist or doesn't it? Do i believe it or don't I? Just because the HRA call it a grade 1, do i have to believe they're right?. Anyway, the production line from 2005 reads
Hurdles = 6
Chasers = 12
Combining the three grade1/2 novice hurdles from 2005 therefore gives the following;
Hurdles = 11
Chases = 40
Flat = 4
Now with the better horses who stay over hurdles the following year likely to remain focused at 2 miles (Arcalis etc) it does make you wonder just what is being filtered through to the staying division, if only 20% are predominantly contesting hurdles races 2 and half years later, and how accurate a grade 1 tag is, if it is then applied to them somewhat disingeniously to capture those who failed to win? The Supreme supplied a future winner admittedly , who finished 15th in his class of 2005, it also supplied one Chilling Place (6th) who went over fences but has since returned to staying handicap hurdles.
The previous investigation as to where top 3 finishers were sourced from revealed a similar pattern. The correlation between 1st or 2nd placed finishers in the novice grade 1 hurdles going into open 2 mile company the following season was quite stark (see previous list). Few that ended up in the staying division had true grade 1 credentials as novices. Of the four I was prepared to conceed did, (off a bigger numerical sample) 3 went onto win the main event a total of 5 times between them to date (which would have probably been 6 were it not for F&M). It was also noticable how quite a few of the horses that have made the frame over the last 10 years came to the divison through mid distance handicap hurdles, or were campaigned specifically at staying hurdles outside of the Festival. Again, the evidence points to a kind of comparative calibre deficiency when set alongside the sourcing of 2 mile grade 1 hurdlers.
From a novice crop of 55 horses at the 2005 festival, so far as I can see, only 3 (5% of the grade 1 cream) went onto run in a World Hurdle in the next 2 renewals.
Against this kind of backdrop you'll understand that I'm slightly sceptical about what the true value of the stayers is, and aren't necessarily convinced just because the HRA pin a grade 1 label on it, that it is. I'd also ask you all to open your minds to the possibility that it's abit of a confidence trick potentially, instead of blindly following the HRA. It would also go some way towards accounting for why the division consistently runs the slowest times, and consistently does so by about 13% below a grade 1 par. With this in mind I'd be wary of making too much of MWDS's grade 1 wins, but they are on the board, and as has been said, he can only beat those put in front of him. having saisd that, he appear to be something of a late developer, and was insulated in a weak division that didn't expose any stamina limitations he might have had at 3 miles.
Do I think he's a grade 1 animal? Yes, and at 2 miles over fences, a very good one.
Do i think World Hurdlers are generally grade 1 horses? No, with a handful of exceptions.
I could go onto the value of the stopwatch etc.... we've had this argument before. The only thing I'll reiterate is that any horse can win a race, and there's many ways of doing it. However, only the very best horses can win top races, in very fast times. There's no other consistent explanation for accounting why horses X can cover ground Y in Z time. Why don't stayers hurdlers ever seem to be able to do it? I don't know, but I susepct they aren't really good enough, and we give them too much credit.
Dessie has trotted out the Lindop explanation as this one is often put up by those who wish to attack the line of investigation. As he's pointed out, it's without real grounds, but for some reason (presumebly it was given an less than fully informed airing?) appears to have gone into folklore as the impregnable defence.
Hope that helps a bit, and I'd even written out an explanation in word with all sorts of graphs and different colour lines to try and explain the MWDS trip thing, only for the software on this package to refuse to accept it cry.
The only observation I'd make about a virus in the yard, is that it tends to get punted around when a few poor performances occur, as it makes for a convenient explanation. I should perhaps say though having observed similar discussions previously, this one looks a bit desperate. It's either amighty selective virus, or it's box hopping depending on how a horse runs. It does have more of the look of someone trying to create a virus to fit a hope. For the time being, I'm prepared to go with the notion that MWDS doesn't stay a truly run 3 miles, but does stay a moderate to easy 3 miles
