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If Denman is not a 180-horse I will eat my hat

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Simon Rowlands reflects on that Hennessy performance...

A Timeform education is an odd thing. You are not so much encouraged to regard your glass as being half empty - rather than half full - as to criticise the glass for also being substandard and in need of a good wash.

Anyone who has worked there for a length of time is hard to impress, in other words.

I did, and I like to think that I am.

So, it is in that context that my evaluation of Denman's Hennessy Gold Cup win should be viewed. It was not the best performance by a jumper since Sliced Bread won his fifth Gold Cup by a street. But it wasn't far off it.

In my time of following racing, only a handful of chasing wins deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.

Desert Orchid at his best - as in the Racing Post Chase and Irish Grand National in 1990 - remains the best, but there was also: Badsworth Boy's 1983 Champion Chase solo; Burrough Hill Lad's 1984 Hennessy win; Carvill's Hill's demolition job in the Welsh Grand National of 1991; Master Oats' win in that race in 1994 and in the Gold Cup of 1995; Moscow Flyer's Tingle Creek win in 2004 and Champion Chase win in 2005; and, of course, there was Kauto Star's 2006 wins in the Betfair Chase and King George. But that's about it.

Some people have struggled to comprehend how good Denman's win was. It's not that difficult. Staying handicaps are won every season by horses winning by 11 lengths and eight, or something like that. It's just that not many of them are 18-runner staying handicaps of the calibre of the Hennessy. And not any of them are won by a horse racing from a mark of 161.

We know what to do with winners of competitive races. It is a self-evident truth that, by winning, they are nearly always showing themselves to be better than their handicap marks. Wide-margin winners are usually MUCH better than their handicap marks. Winners need to go up in the ratings. Wide-margin winners of competitive races need to go up lots.

We also know from countless precedent that placed horses in circumstances like Saturday's are usually better than their handicap marks. It beggars belief to think that nothing other than Denman was capable of running to form in one of the most targeted races in the Calendar. Twelve other horses got round, after all.

It's a relatively simple job to crunch the numbers, to allow for the conditions, the time of the race, the size of the field, the number of completers and the margins between them, and the weights carried and putative abilities of the horses concerned, and to come up with a figure that should be accurate the vast majority of the time to within a couple of pounds either way.

If Denman is not a 180-horse or very nearly a 180-horse I will eat my hat (one of those cheap paper Christmas ones, just to be on the safe side).

And all this from a horse having only his sixth start over fences and 11th overall.

Remarkably, that still does not necessarily make him better than his stable-companion Kauto Star, though I rather think that it does. As mentioned last week, however, Kauto Star's stamina is arguably his Achilles Heel. Denman eats stamina for breakfast. Figuratively speaking.

Denman is [3.25] on Betfair for the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March, Kauto Star is [3.6]. The not-to-be-forgotten Exotic Dancer is [10.5].

Even an old cynic's glass - a well-crafted and immaculately turned-out glass, as it happens - seems very much half full all of a sudden.