Grand National 2022

More very sad news this morning.
RIP Disco and Eclair Surf.

ISawLeaburnScore said:

I should add great tipping and in depth analysis as you offer every year without fail @PeanutsMolloy

You may not have had the winner in your model this year and I guess as a 7 year old novice who had never won a 3m chase there might be some crunching you need to do for 2023, but selecting 4 of the first 7 home and putting them up weeks ago when one was at 100 and another 66 is first class.

Cheers @ISawLeaburnScore
You're very kind. I am pleased with how the model performed tbh:
3rd & 5th being 2 of the 4 with winning calibre stats on the ground (Dingo still in touch when a softish UR at 2nd Canal Turn and Snow Leopardess clearly not herself and preferring juice).
Of the other 6 with place-calibre ratings, Cloth Cap (bled) and Mighty Thunder (ran like his wind op hadn't worked) succumbed to the known risks and the other 4 all departed early (Enjoy D'Allen over-jumping at the 1st, Eclair Surf sadly succumbing to his jumping weakness on fast ground, Death Wish a very soft UR at 1st Canal Turn and School Boy Hours badly hampered by Minella Times and PU-ing immediately).
To have so many knocked out by 9th fence got me worried it might be that this would be the year the model would crash and burn. So to have 4 still in contention at 2nd last, I ended up a tad disappointed to miss the winner; though to be fair, Delta was beaten >20L and there's no complaints about winner or 2nd.

A quick look at Noble Yeats from the perspective of why the model accorded him a deeply unpromising stat-rating of 4.
Despite being the first 7 yo to win for 82 years, that wasn't a source of a negative. The outperformance of 8 year-olds and 2nd season chasers in the modern GN compared to pre-2013 meant that the model already reckoned it was only a matter of time before a 7 yo winner.
The problem for the Slide Rule IMO was the simple lack of chase data (being a 1st season chaser with only 7 chases prior to yesterday, of which just 4 were at 3m+). There's a miniscule sample of 1st season chasers running in modern GNs; only 3 since 2013 (<1% of fields), producing a best finish of 7th (Vieux Lion Rouge) with the others UR and and PU injured. 

Together with a lack of Wild Risk on the damside (obviously not a function of his race record) Noble Yeats failed the big field, the Grade 1/2 and the ultra-stamina tests and that's where the tweaks for the model should logically be sought IMO; it's runners with short careers to assess that create a relatively high margin of error and are thus most likely to throw up boundary breakers for individual Slide Rule tests. 

After all, his lack of win/near-miss at 24f and solitary success at shorter may simply indicate that he could be in need of much further to be at his best - evidently so.

Will be back-testing some tweaked tests for each of these to try to reconcile his victory whilst maintaining the outperformance relative to representation for each test.

That still leaves us short of an X-Factor positive to make him backable, according to the model. 
The various pedigree positives are currently focussed on a runner's damside and he draws a blank with that. But there is an interesting angle to his sire, Yeats. 

After Win My Wings romped home at Ayr last weekend, I mentioned that the progeny of his sire Gold Well have a very good record in 4m+ chases.
Gold Well's parentage is Sadlers Wells (sire) and Top Ville (damsire, and descendant of Wild Risk). Sadlers Well's progeny are ubiquitous in National Hunt pedigrees but there are few that combine his genes with a daughter of Top Ville.
Other than Gold Well, it just so happens that one of them is Yeats, sire of Noble Yeats. 
Yeats is also the sire of Longhouse Poet (6th yesterday). 

And though Gold Well drew a blank as sire yesterday, Fiddlerontheroof's damsire is Montjeu, full brother to Gold Well.

Of those sires represented yesterday with 10+ runs in 4m+ chases and 1+ winner, the 2 with the top %s making-the-frame in 4m+ chases are:

Gold Well: 27 runs / 4 wins / 5 places = 33% making the frame 

Yeats: 14 / 1 / 4 = 29% making the frame

Sires are tricky to use for GN stats, as there's often a lot of new names with small samples of 4m+ runs by their progeny but such is the strength of record of the progeny of these 2 stallions (with identical father and maternal grandfather) from 41 attempts, that I'm suspecting this may be a significant factor behind Noble Yeats' fantastic run yesterday, finishing like a fresh horse, just as Win My Wings did at Ayr.

More work to be done but he may not be quite the outlier he appears to be at first glance.

Roll on 2023!!

Many thanks for your very kind comments folks.
They’re all very much appreciated.
Glad that you find the thread enjoyable and many thanks for all of your contributions, which make it particularly interesting and enjoyable for me.
Am very grateful you put faith in my musings.
Will probably have lash at the Irish on Easter Monday (purely my dodgy nose at work) but looking forward to another blast at the big one next year.
Till then, all the best.

RobinKeepsBobbin said:

Peanuts.. Early days and all that but what is your gut feeling about the possibility of Noble Yeats chance of winning again next year or even going on to equal the record?

Tricky one and everything depends on weight.

Of course, the way he travelled and jumped and the strength of his finish was really impressive. Sam WC did get a whip suspension (as a digression, in my book that should always prompt a disqualification but he has himself been the victim of whip abuse when Jason Maguire and Ballabriggs held off Oscar Time in 2011) but it doesn’t deny the quality on display.

That said, my gut feeling is "no" he won't win again next year if the handicapper's reaction is consistent. If so, I think he'll be clobbered when his mark is updated tomorrow and it will likely do for him, even on his upgraded CV.

According to the RP, he notched a career-high RPR160 yesterday (+11lbs) and that seems fair relative to Any Second Now, whose 2nd (20L clear of 3rd) the RP also rated a career-high RPR170 (+3lbs on his 2021 3rd). That might get revised but it looks fair enough to me, since he's clearly progressed this term (Bobbyjo win in Feb was impressive too).

I don't expect the handicapper to treat Noble Yeats any more leniently than they have other recent GN winners who've finished strongly and, if Minella Times' OR this term is anything to go by, even a modest campaign next season (bear in mind, Noble Yeats comes from a Curley-esque, gambling stables!) won't elicit any mercy.

I think he'll get at least +10lbs to OR157+ on Tuesday and if that's his assigned GNOR next Feb, there would have to be a record topweight this century of 168 (Galvin's current mark) for him to carry <11.00. As his CV and stats now stand, burdened with 1 hard test-fail without Wild Risk on his damside, 11.00+ will mean he'll likely fail at least 3 (target is 0~2), even with only +4lbs on his back.

Obviously he might chalk up another CV-enhancing run next term that established a better stat-score, but it would likely prompt a still-higher mark.
But you can never say never. We'll see.