Timeform

And while I do, we're going to head back home now because he's on his way to Catterick today to cover a flat meeting for Racing TV.

But I'm delighted that Dan Barber joins the show from Timeform with his perspective on a few notable performances from the last week and also his thoughts on where Timeform stand on the two feature races here at Breeders' Cup 43.

something of a Where Eagles Dare theme to this week's Timeform slot.

Nick, you manning the foot at the Schloss Adler of Keeneland in the Clint Eastwood role.

I'm backing Blighty.

And America, something of a theme, because Enable, if you go back to 2018, won a Breeders' Cup turf at Churchill Downs, and we saw that she's got some brilliance in terms of Her offspring as well, one runner to date, that was Entrust, who ran at Doncaster last week, and visually was very impressive.

But what do the numbers say? Well, the numbers suggest it was a performance of some significant merit.

Indeed, only two horses on Timeform Ratings have run to a higher figure first time out this season amongst the juveniles.

Tactics, we'll see what they decide to do, because that race I pointed out at Churchill, he rolled from towards the back.

Timeform suggests he should be mid-pack, and I think looking at his races here, i i could go either way on this sometimes you see horses off a long layoff that they're a little bit more keen because it's race day and they know what's expected of them and they're just a little bit more high strung but i mean going back to his other turf sprints i could also see a situation where he's in the back three or four early on so He'll need some pace help.

He'll need to run well off the layoff, but the barn does really well getting horses prepped to make their return.

The number seven, Utopian.

He went to that final and he was heavily backed to win, but it rained significantly on the day.

I think the ground was officially good, but Timeform, I mean, it was mucky and Timeform called it soft.

And I thought it looked pretty testing and the field got very stretched out.

He ended up running respectively in fourth, beating 11 lengths, but I didn't think he enjoyed the ground that day.

But you look at some of them and you think, how on earth, how on earth are you getting a place at stud and covering so many mares?

Now, normally, we would have had a good look through Champions Day via the Timeform perspective yesterday or perhaps even on Monday.

But Simon Cox dominated our show yesterday.

So we have paused and bringing it to you today in the company of Timeform's flat editor, David Johnson.

David, my initial feeling walking out of Ascot on Saturday was that this was something of a vintage Champions Day in terms of depth of quality.

Is that borne out by the numbers?

Thanks a lot.

Cheers, Nick.

Um, that's across, you know, so many different mediums.

TimeForm, Racing Post ratings.

Um, the, the-- even the Longines world rankings have him...

Do they still have him number one? Well, they got Um- Ombudsman number one.

I don't know whether we're doing a black tie awards this year.

Maybe we'll do it when the Timeform Awards come out.

But when you talk about performances of the season, I, I, I just wonder, I, I'm sure a lot of people will say Bo Echo, others might say that Gold Cup and Kalpana in the King George.

But for me, the, the one time I've gone, wow, all season I think, was when the Turbo kicked in with Al Morac at Haydock Park.

Um, he, but yeah, Drumbeat was very impressive.

He obviously relished the step up to, to, uh, 10 furlongs.

Got a Timeform rating of 109.

The, the time figure was 107, so it's very solid.

I think at, at Irish Champions weekend, he first floated that idea that Star might go up in distance for the Champion Stakes from eight to 10 furlongs, and that Constitution River might or could come back from 10 to a mile for the QE II.

I know that we're gonna have Dan Barber on the program later on, and it'll be interesting to see what Timeform say about those horses' merits.

Just a, a, a bit of housekeeping with regard to the Aidan O'Brien squad.

As many people will know by now, um, Jan Bröjgel is out for the season.

Um, if Constitution River, and presuming Talk Of New York, runs in the QE II, the mile race of the weekend, where do they stack up against the existing entries?

Currently, th- this is, uh, how the land lies without the supplementary entries.

Star and Diamond Necklace top rated for the race with Timeform.

On 134, adjusted, and Erdanali a, a pound behind that pair with a P for, uh, Francis-Henri Graffard.

Sorry, just, just, just quickly on that York race, right? From, from, from a handicapping point of view, right, I see, like I see...

I've seen a few people have tipped up Mountain, uh, Mountain Road, including I think Timeform has tipped it up, right? Like, Kirchner's 9 pound better off with that for being beat six and a half lengths at York, where the ride is questionable, should we say.

Questionable.

Um, the horse that, the horse of, uh, he beat half a length, um, uh, Valedictory, he's 4 pound better off with that for beating it half a length.

Right.

We know that the Timeform team got the infamous squiggle.

The squiggle being that they put that beside their rating to a horse who they reckon is, I mean, you can insert your own adjective here, but let's call it tricky or has question marks about his resolution or her resolution.

So that's the Timeform squiggle.

Fran, we're going to have to come up with something for you.

The highlighter.