This wasn’t an entirely perfect performance from Willie Mullins’ charge, who made a couple of notable errors, most significantly at the 6th from home when she went through the fence. However, Spindleberry still managed to produce the most fluent set of jumping data in the field, losing an average of 11% of her speed over her obstacles (next best Fun Fun Fun 11.9%) and once the pace lifted in the home straight, she was the only horse who ever seemed likely to win the race. Although Telepathique had a lead of 6 lengths as they turned for home, Danny Mullins didn’t seem overly concerned and Spindleberry quickly closed that gap, running the fastest split for each of the final 4 furlongs and taking over a second out of the other 4 runners in the final quarter of a mile. A late speed figure of 31.01 mph was a clear race best figure and her rivals simply had no answer. Telepathique, Paggane and Fun Fun Fun have all won Listed races over fences and they were all race fit coming into this contest, yet they simply had no answer for Spindleberry’s class in the Doncaster straight. A winning time of 5:03.98 was over 11s faster than the TPD expected time for a pattern race over this course and distance on good ground.

What can we make of the mares that chased Spindleberry home? Telepathique was on a roll back in the Spring before an injury cut her season short. She hasn’t quite returned to the same form so far in this campaign, but she has a rating of 145 and that has perhaps left her caught between the top of the handicap and pattern races. This was a better display and she did reverse the form with Paggane from their meeting at Carlisle earlier in the season. She is coming back to her best form and although she was no match for the winner, she did manage to hold the closing Paggane with a final furlong of 15.05s (ranked 2nd). Having made the running in a race run with a finishing speed of 103%, I think that can be seen as a positive step and there will be other opportunities for her in the months ahead, where she is unlikely to meet a mare with the class of Monday’s winner. Paggane was perhaps slightly disappointing and she certainly didn’t run to the same level of form that she showed when winning at Market Rasen last time. Having been ridden patiently, she struggled to get on terms and an average speed loss of 14.8% over her fences made her the least fluent jumper of the 5 runners. It may be that a 3rd start in the space of 8 weeks proved a little too much for her, but she has already added a pair of Listed wins to her CV this season and will perhaps be better after a short break. Fun Fun Fun had a run over hurdles in November where she finished 4th behind Feet of a Dancer. That didn’t offer too much encouragement and although she briefly looked like getting involved in the finish when jumping the 3rd from home, she quickly faded, closing with furlongs of 15.79 and 15.72s, fully 2.59s slower than the winner. Bryony Frost did her best to hold her mount together to finish her race, but she lacked the gears needed to go with the principles. She got the better of Paggane at Perth back in April, but at present she seems a long way short of that form.

Spindleberry has yet to race at Cheltenham, but there are very few Grade 1 performers in the Mares’ division and with the possible exception of her stablemate Dinoblue, who seems to show her best form in the Spring, there aren’t too many horses for her connections to fear if they do head to the Mares’ Chase in March. She can travel, she can jump, she can recover from a mistake and she showed on Monday that she has plenty of speed if it’s needed. Admittedly on level weights, she has beaten a field of 145+ rated mares with relative ease, even if one or two of them may have run slightly below their best and at least ran to her official rating of 150, if not a bit beyond that. A performance at that level should be more than enough to be competitive in the Mares’ Chase on the Friday afternoon of the Cheltenham festival and there are no obvious reasons for any doubts from the data from this race.