Simon Rowlands has done an excellent write up for free for Timeform today and he explains far better than i tried to do about Altior. Ill try and copy and paste it if anyones interested, but makes really interesting reading in my opinion.
After an action-packed weekend of jumps racing, Simon Rowlands analyses the main races using sectional timing.
It was 12 months ago that Sandown’s early-December meeting turned up one of the most interesting sectional comparisons over jumps of the last few years.
The winner of the Henry VIII Novices’ Chase, Ar Mad, ran his race faster than did the winner of the Tingle Creek Chase, Sire de Grugy, at the same course and distance, not just from start to finish but at every obstacle along the way after the first, as described at the time HERE.
Such things are not meant to happen when up-and-coming horses are compared with established stars, but happen it did. We did not get a chance to see if Ar Mad was indeed a better horse than Sire de Grugy at the time – and by implication better than nearly all other 2m chasers around – as the Gary Moore-trained gelding was injured soon after.
The two finally met in this year’s Betfair Tingle Creek, with Sire de Grugy second and Ar Mad a rallying fourth, but the latter was having his first run since that injury and could yet prove the better animal.
What is clear is that Ar Mad’s presence made for a strongly-run race – too strongly-run for his own good in the early stages – which resulted in a time 2.5 seconds quicker than the potentially exceptional Altior achieved a bit earlier in this year’s Racing Post Henry VIII.
A similar comparison for this year’s races paints a very different picture to 12 months ago.
This time, it was the seasoned stars who were quicker, and as much as 35 lengths ahead by halfway if using 5 lengths per second as a conversion.
What’s more, Ar Mad was about a dozen lengths ahead of where he “should” have been if using his energy efficiently at that stage, given the race’s ultimate time and information derived from sectionals in well-run races at the track in recent years.
The Tingle Creek winner, Un de Sceaux, was about seven lengths off that pace at halfway and Sir Valentine – the outsider who stayed on into a pretty close fifth – was more like 15 lengths back. The latter will have run close to peak efficiency throughout.
The Tingle Creek resulted in a time for Un de Sceaux about 23 lb quicker than that for Altior in the Henry VIII, but that is in no small part because the latter contest was run even more steadily than the Tingle Creek was run strongly.
The novices had energy to burn at the end of their race, and Altior in particular put in some remarkably fast sectionals at the business end.
Only three horses in all races at Sandown this year have broken 40.0s from three out (the Pond Fence), and Altior was fastest of them at 39.23s. He may have beaten the smart Charbel by “only” six lengths, but those sectionals have him value for at least 10.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate just how fast Altior finished is to show some one-on-one comparisons with other Sandown 2m chases in the last 12 months run in similar overall times, including some races mentioned already.
It can be seen that while this year’s Henry VIII was much slower to halfway, and only around average in time from there to three out, it was fastest from the Pond Fence to the last and much the fastest from the last fence to the line.
Altior completed the run-in roughly 5 lengths quicker than Ar Mad had in the same race (when forging away from his rivals) 12 months earlier, roughly 10 lengths quicker than Un de Sceaux did later on the same card, and roughly 9 lengths quicker than Sprinter Sacre had done when beating Un de Sceaux by 15 lengths in his swansong on a sounder surface in April.
That impression of a turbo-charged finish from Altior was not a trick of the eye!
However, sectional analysis involves trading off the speeds shown in sections of a race against the times (and timefigures) achieved overall. That blistering finish from Altior does not automatically identify him as a superstar, though it does identify him as significantly better than a cursory look at his overall time might suggest.
A consideration of all winners on Sandown’s Saturday card puts things further into context.
Those figures further identify the wins of Arctic Gold and Rocky Creek as having been meritorious from an overall and sectional timing point of view.
There are no real hidden nuggets in the Sandown sectionals (which are available in full in Timeform’s Sectional Archive), other than that Altior figure. But, where Altior is concerned, it should also be pointed out that he had run very fast overall – and much faster from obstacle to obstacle than a useful handicapper later on the card – when making his debut at Kempton.
All the signs are that Altior will be at least as good over fences as he was over hurdles, and that means very good indeed.
