An overall winning time of 3:54.24 was just under 3s slower than the Supreme winner Old Park Star, but a finishing speed of 105% would point to this race being run at a decent, but not frenetic early pace. On ground described as Good to Soft, Lossiemouth ran a time figure that was over 7s faster than the TPD expected time for this race and that would probably point to the fact that the ground may have been drying by that point in the afternoon. In the last decade only Honeysuckle (2022) and Buveur D’Air (2017) have recorded faster winning times in this race. It’s possible that the drying ground and in particular the lack of a pacemaker to give her a lead inconvenienced the runner-up Brighterdaysahead, but an examination of the speed data in the latter part of the race would suggest that the winner was in a different league altogether. Lossiemouth ranked 1st for her top speed (37.12 mph), 1st for her late speed (31.47 mph) and 1st for her run-out speed (28.54 mph), the latter coming despite the fact that Paul Townend had allowed her to coast over the line with the race won. In a rather odd twist, Anzadam ran the fastest final furlong in 14.45s, but given the fact that he was disappearing out of the back of the screen as they approached the 2nd last, I don’t think that is overly relevant. Once brought alongside Brighterdaysahead when jumping the 2nd last, Lossiemouth was 1.37s quicker than the runner-up over the final quarter of a mile. She came home in 28.41s for the final 2 furlongs which compares well with the finishing time recorded by Old Park Star (28.69s), although the winner of the Fred Winter, Saratoga, clocked 27.59s for that section of the course. The overall time for the Juvenile handicap was much slower than the Champion Hurdle and the fact that Saratoga had a finishing speed of 106.5% means that the comparison between their finishing speeds requires a very large “pinch of salt”. Old Park Star may have clocked a better winning time and he was carrying 7 lbs more than Lossiemouth, but they were very different races and I want to leave no doubt that the data confirms that the best hurdler to run on the opening day of the festival was Lossiemouth.

The argument could be made that neither Sir Gino nor Constitution Hill made it to the race. Perhaps the ground was against the runner-up, who also has a history of running below her best at Cheltenham. The New Lion did race wider than may have been ideal around the bends and Alexei was still moving forwards when he made a shuddering error at the last flight. Perhaps there is some truth in that but my advice is to ignore any doubts and ignore any loss in your pocket if you backed against her. Instead, just watch the race, believe your eyes, believe the data and believe the winning margin. Lossiemouth is an exceptional race mare who has now won at 4 consecutive Cheltenham festivals. She has flown up the Cheltenham hill for the last 4 years and as they approached the last on Tuesday afternoon, she was the only horse still travelling strongly in her jockeys hands. The list of horses that have won 4 times at the Festival is not that long, but she has now added her name to that list of great horses. The reason she has done that is because she is a Great horse.