CHELTENHAM A WEEK AHEAD: WHAT THE STATS SAY: DAY 1: From Tuesday to Friday this week, matching their running times next week, Daqman previews Cheltenham day by day, mainly from a stats point of view. What do past results and ratings suggest will win at the 2013 festival?
9.2 NAP IN DEVON NATIONAL: Daqman today supports Ireland’s top Points horse on its hurdles debut at Neecastle but his nap is a 9.2 BETDAQ offer, Incentivise, the Southern National winner now trying to add the western version, the Devon National, to its CV.
CHELTENHAM Tuesday March 12: Supreme Novices Hurdle: The developing trend is for this race to be higher quality, as seen in the winner’s rating, with the old 136-138 standard giving way: that level has scored only once in the last six renewals.
A 142 rating has been required four times, and a 147 three years ago, but even that is beneath the standard set this year by Dodging Bullets (156), Jezki (153), Un Atout (151), Puffin Billy (150), Champagne Fever (149), My Tent Or Yours (149) and Melodic Rendezvous (145).
Theoretically, any one of them would be a Supreme champion in a normal year: this has always been a race to produce a star, the more so this time around it seems.
But there are other trends in the championship novice hurdles; one of them is for the horse to have started his career in bumpers. That applies to eight of the last 10 winners of this, and the last two both ran well (second and fifth) in the Cheltenham Champion Bumper the year before.
The 2012 bumper-title result has these horses quoted near the front of the Supreme Novice market: Champagne Fever, first; Pique Sous, third; and Jezki, eighth.
Eight of the last 10 Supreme winners had scored last time out; the two others were second and third. Paul Nicholls has won twice in the last seven years.
Daqman’s ante-post bets: MELODIC RENDEZVOUS at 12.0 on BETDAQ and CHATTERBOX at 16.0.
Arkle Trophy Chase: An official mark from 152-157 trapped Arkle winners until a ‘monster’ came on the scene last year: Sprinter Sacre plonked a 169 on the table. Get out of that!
Well, of course, they didn’t: Sprinter Sacre only had to run to around 162 to slaughter them by 7 lengths and 22 to make his 11-8 on look like the proverbial gift-horse.
Top of the official chase ratings on Tuesday, with their hurdles-best mark in parentheses, are: Overturn 164 (160), Simonsig 160 (160), Oscars Well 158 (152) and Captain Conan 152 (147). Reason for the figures in brackets? Nine of the last 10 Arkle winners had 142-plus hurdles ratings.
But against Overturn, a 9-year-old, and Oscars Well, at 8, is that horses aged five to seven are 9-1 up in the last decade. Only Sizing Europe has thrashed the youngsters: he was 8 when he won in 2010.
Champion Hurdle: The pluses: Grumeti, Hurricane Fly, Peddlers Cross, Rock On Ruby and Zarkander all won last time out, as did 24 of the last 29 Champion Hurdle winners.
The minuses: Binocular and Hurricane Fly have to emulate a lonesome trio that won aged nine in the last 60 years, the last one Rooster Booster (2003) being only the second to do so in 21 years after Royal Gait (1992).
In similar vein, Binocular and Hurricane Fly, winners in 2010 and 2011, would be the first since Comedy of Errors (1973 and 1975) to regain the title.
Rock On Ruby would have to be as good as Hardy Eustace (2004-5) and Istabraq (1998-2000) to record back-to-back wins.
Recent Champion Hurdlers went to post off a rating of between 163 and 167. That covers all I’ve mentioned, barring Grumeti (153), and suggests that the youngsters most likely to take a hand are Zarkandar (168) and Grandouet (166).
Daqman’s ante-post bets: BINOCULAR at 12.0 on BETDAQ.
Cross-Country: Only multiple winners of this, giants of the discipline, Spot Thedifference and Garde Champetre, both trained by Enda Bolger for J P McManus, have been able to carry more than 10st 13lb to victory in the eight years of this contest.
The four winners outside the big two had all been beaten in a similar contest on the same course in the November or the December, two of them finishing third.
Outlaw Pete (3rd), Another Jewel (4th) and Sizing Australia (6th) followed home Uncle Junior and Balthazar King in this year’s equivalent. Sizing Australia, who won this in 2011, and Another Jewel both carry less than 10-13 on Tuesday.
After Spot Thedifference had dominated the Cheltenham cross-country, McManus bought Garde Champetre for a staggering £530,000 and put him with Jonjo O’Neill to win a chicken-feed novice chase at Carlisle. But, when switched to Enda Bolger, Garde Champetre became the new banks champion.
Bolger won the Punchestown cross-country a month ago with Arabella Boy, who is likely to start favourite on Tuesday, but the shortest price of the McManus contingent this year is Outlaw Pete, not trained by Bolger but by John Halley.
The Bolger-McManus entry, Doctor Pat, a Newbury novice-chase for Francois Doumen, is unlikely to start off a lowly 9st 1lb.
STATS PICK OF THE DAY: JLT Speciality Chase: The first handicap of the festival. The winner three years in the last four had raced at the Haydock meeting in February, between 23 and 25 days before Cheltenham, finishing fifth, second and fourth.
The weights parameter for success four years in the last five has been 10st 9lb to 11st 2lb. Four years in the last five the winner’s rating was 143, 142, 142, 143.
DAQMAN’S BETS
BET 5.2pts win CLONDAW KNIGHT (2.20 Newcastle)
BET 2.7pts win LORD OF THE DUNES (3.00 Exeter)
BET 2.4pts win (nap) INCENTIVISE (3.30 Exeter)
DAQ MULTIPLES: 1pt win yankee CLONDAW KNIGHT (2.20 Newcastle), LORD OF THE DUNES (3.00 Exeter), INCENTIVISE (3.30 Exeter) and SOUTHFIELD THEATRE (4.30 Exeter)
Daqman’s bets are staked to win 20 points, except Daq Multiples.
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