Today's best bets, by Will Hayler
Plenty of talking points to mull over after yesterday's British Champions Day, but before it gets lost in the excitement of Frankel and Soumillon, a quick word on the sectional timings that were used thanks to Turftrax technology at Ascot.
The limitations of sectional timings for the British punting public are obvious, not least because it will take years to build up enough data at each track to make the information useful for comparative purposes. But if you haven't looked at yesterday's timings, you can find them here.
See you for yourself how Jamie Spencer (to my considerable expense) wound up the pace from the front on Fame And Glory and produced fractions that the pure stayers could not hope to match, or how Frankel clocked a faster furlong time from the three-furlong pole to the two-furlong pole of the QEII than Deacon Blues managed at any stage of the Champions Sprint.
I defy you to tell me that this isn't an experiment that should be widened, at least for our all-weather tracks as a starting point.
I bumped into Phil Kirby at Wetherby on Wednesday, a trainer who some of you will already know has trained a handful of slow, injured or retired horses for me in the past.
He told me he was going to Kempton on Sunday to see his Triumph Hurdle horse Lady Chloe (2.15) win the opener.
Now, rather than running to the bank and remortgaging the house to get it all on this good thing, I should warn you that last year Phil's Triumph Hurdle horse was Plus Ultra, who is still to finish better than fourth in six starts over hurdles. But I know that the trainer thinks a great deal of Lady Chloe, who won easily on her hurdling debut at Stratford in August, and the weight she receives today from Alframmsey will make her very hard to beat.
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