3 minute read
The sun did not shine this time, and a capacity crowd became merely a near-capacity crowd, but in some respects the second AW Finals Day on Good Friday at Lingfield were even more successful than the first.
All the winners were useful or better, and two of them in particular – Pretend and Tryster – looked very capable of winning on an even bigger stage.
Where it did not succeed, unfortunately, is in terms of delivering a timing system to match the rest of the occasion. A technical issue meant that the promised live sectionals did not materialise, and this was not so much an opportunity squandered to engage with the public around the subject matter as an opportunity ruined.
British racing has so far favoured high-technology solutions to sectional timing, but high technology also tends to come at a high price, meaning that such solutions are still not widespread. High technology evidently comes with a degree of fragility, also.
There is an alternative, and it is one which Timeform has been pursuing for some time now: namely, to take sectionals as accurately as possible from videos. The camerawork and clock work in evidence on AW Finals Day was excellent – take a bow At The Races – so that what follows is shared with a reasonable degree of confidence.
Firstly the headline or “race” sectionals, for the race leaders in the early stages as well as for the all-important last two furlongs.
Those finishing speed %s immediately identify the Tryster race and the Mymatechris race as slowly-run (resulting in fast finishes and high %s), the Four Seasons race as having been less than true, and the other four races as having been truly-run to greater or lesser degrees. This tallies precisely with what might be inferred from timefigures derived from the overall times themselves.
More specifically, comparison between the times and the projected pars provided in Timeform’s Guide To Sectional Timing for AW Finals Day shows that five of the races set off quickly enough, but that the Four Seasons race and (to a lesser degree) the Fresles race steadied somewhat mid-race. The Lightscameraction was frenetic from the start (the implied final-furlong time gives a finishing speed of just 92.4%, so the leaders were flagging at the very end).
Individual sectionals, and the upgrades which result from them (a process described at length in Timeform’s free-to-download “Sectional Timing: An Introduction by Timeform”), suggest that Lamar (22.80s, 104.2%) and Don’t Be (22.69s, 104.7%) can be rated marginally superior to Fresles, who received a very accomplished ride from the front.
They show that Chookie Royale 23.1s (100.7%) went only fractionally faster than optimum but that Alben Star (22.18s, 104.8%) finished strongly enough to warrant being rated alongside the impressive winner Pretend (22.69s, 102.2%), in sectional terms anyway.
They have Four Seasons (23.04s, 105.1%) closest of the principals in his race to par, if not by much (there’s probably even less between the first five than the result suggests), and Sovereign Debt (22.54s, 105.8%) a slightly unlucky loser against Grey Mirage (22.90s, 104.1%), even before you consider the considerable traffic problems he encountered. And they suggest that third to sixth in the Lightscameraction race should be rated at least a length closer (while the leaders went fast, the others were more inconvenienced by being a bit too far back).
Last-two-furlong sectionals also upgrade Mymatechris (22.52s, 1166.4%) in the finale more than most of his rivals, but not more than third-placed Hidden Gold (22.36s, 117.3%), who looks to have been a shade unlucky in a race that counted against held-up horses.
And then there was Tryster, who got into one of the most slowly-run races ever at Lingfield – as shown by that extremely high finishing speed % – and yet managed to unleash a truly devastating turn of foot to settle the issue comfortably when it mattered.
The broadcast pictures and on-screen clock make it possible to state with confidence that Tryster ran the last two furlongs in 20.97s (122.6%, 42.9 mph). No horse had been recorded running faster than 21.39s for the last two furlongs at Lingfield at any distance in 2005 to 2008 or since 2013. None.
Only about 2% of horses run under 22.0s for the final quarter of a mile at Lingfield, and the majority that do are at sprint distances. This is a sectional “record” that may stand for a very, very long time.
Of course, the run of the race, and not just Tryster’s considerable merit, made this possible: third-placed Grendisar (21.32s, 121.0%) also beat the previous best, incidentally. But that merit is going to be seriously undersold by those who remain obsessed with just final results and not how those final results came about.
Sectional upgrades have Tryster a 15 lb better horse than Grendisar (rated 119 by Timeform) and a 26 lb better horse than Shalaman (now rated 105 by Timeform) on the day, even though he beat neither of those rivals by especially far.
A rating for Tryster in the mid-120s recognises that these were special circumstances – and that Tryster has a very special ability to quicken however good he truly is – but also clearly suggest that he can win at Group 2 and maybe even Group 1 level.
Whether Tryster proves so effective on surfaces other than polytrack does remain to be seen, but it seems unlikely that anything short of a Frankel or a Kingman will do him for a turn of foot when he is in this sort of form.
