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Cheltenham Betting: I'm not singing 'Osana' quite yet

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Simon Rowlands looks back on Sublimity's return to the track at Cheltenham last weekend...

Seldom have I found it so difficult to make sense of a race I got so right in the first place as with Saturday's International Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Sublimity did indeed turn up unfit to a degree that saw him go from looking a big danger two out to being a horse unable to hang on to a place on the run-in. Katchit was more convincing than at Newcastle (though only just) and the under-rated Osana continued his progression by winning, though not at the price [21.0] at which he had been trading when last week's Rowley File came out.

And yet, as Johnny Nash once said in a very different context, there are more questions than answers.

Those questions include: How much better than the result was Sublimity? What difference did it make that Osana was gifted a lead of a few lengths at the start? What would the result have been if all the runners had run off level weights? And, perhaps most of all, how good is Osana, and can he progress further?

The answers are not cut and dried, but a few facts may assist in putting some of the subjectivity into a clearer context.

Firstly, the ground was more testing than the official "good" (descriptions of the surface at Cheltenham are notoriously unreliable these days). Time analysis suggests it was good to soft, and, what's more, a bit nearer to soft than good at that.

Secondly, extended two-mile hurdles on the New Course, over which Saturday's race was run, take more getting than the equivalent on the Old Course, over which the Champion Hurdle will be contested. Races on the New Course are not only approximately half a furlong longer but there are fewer hurdles - and therefore less chance to get a breather into a horse - in the closing stages than for the big race in March.

Lastly, there are the times to be considered. Not just the overall time - which was respectable for horses of such a calibre, no more - but also the sectional times.

There have been enough hurdle races over the International's course and distance over the years for us to know that we can expect a horse to come home from the second-last in about 23% of its overall time if the race has been truly run. That's roughly what Harper Valley and Franchoek did in the opening juvenile, but Osana came home remarkably slowly and the horses Osana beat came home more slowly still.

They came home slowly because they had gone notably quickly before that: no "soft lead" this. By the end only Osana and Penzance (who plodded on into third) were still galloping: everything else was corpsed. If you doubt this get a stopwatch out and check the video footage on the Racing Post website.

That's not intended to take anything away from Osana - far from it - but I would be considerably more interested in him if the ground is testing in March than if it is not.

Sublimity, conversely, is all about speed and quite capable of reversing the placings three months on - on level terms and appreciably fitter - if the ground is no softer than good. He travelled strongly and went second for a stride running to the last before caving in. The old ability seems to be all there.

Osana is [8.8] to back on Betfair; Sublimity is [5.8]. None too surprisingly, the horse who beat Osana when in receipt of weight on their reappearances, Sizing Europe, has come in for sustained support and is now as short as [11.0]. He is due to run in Ireland over Christmas.

In poker parlance, I think I'll check rather than raise at this stage. Things (not least what the likely state of the going will be) should be clearer further down the line.

All-weather racing is very much the poor relation of jumps racing at this time of year, but there are still occasional gems to be found. One of them could be found at Kempton last Wednesday when Rabbit Fighter broke the six-furlong track record on a night when no other fast times were posted.

You could justifiably rate Rabbit Fighter about 90 on time alone, and if he's in the same sort of form this Wednesday night (19:20 race) the others won't see the way he goes. He's running at the same course and distance and even from the same stall (once the different-sized fields are taken into account) as a week ago, while a 6lb penalty takes his mark up to only 65. Rabbit Fighter currently trades at [1.82].

What can possibly stop him? It all sounds a bit too good to be true!