Which courses pose the toughest test of jumping?

If you, the reader, were asked to name the racecourse you consider to be the ‘hardest test of jumping fences’ in Britain and Ireland, which would it be? The track that has the biggest and/or mostly densely packed fences? The track where the fences come most quickly upon one another? The track that stages the most championship races? The track with the highest ratio of falls and unseats to runners? Or would it some other consideration?

There is no right and wrong answer to this question. However, the purpose of this brief is to try and answer objectively as best as we can using the data available within the Timeform database. Comparing height and thickness of fences across tracks is beyond the scope of this remit, but we will call upon distances between fences and bends as supporting evidence where we can. We’ll start by comparing the number of falls and unseats at each track and then considering the factors that might influence those numbers.  

We have counted the number of falls, unseats and runners over fences for the 10-year period from November 1, 2009, omitting horses whose Betfair Starting Price was greater than 7.5 times the number of runners. This is to exclude those that the market considered (rightly or wrongly) well out of their depth and so had the potential to have their jumping compromised.

The figures for the top 10 highest and lowest rated courses over this time period are shown below. 

It’s no surprise to see the Grand National course ranked the ‘hardest’ jumping test based on this criteria, but are Fakenham and Catterick really more fearsome jumping tests than either Cheltenham course or Ireland’s top track Punchestown?

There are numerous factors that affect the fall-unseat rate. For example, the required minimum number of fences per two miles is different in Britain and Ireland. Ffos Las’s two-mile chase course usually requires 13 fences to be jumped when low sun and boggy patches don’t intervene; over two miles at Naas only 10 fences are usually required.

Younger and relatively inexperienced horses fall or unseat much more frequently than older more experienced horses. At Sandown, eight out of ten races are framed to attract experienced horses; at Tipperary the programme is heavily weighted towards novices. So, other things being equal, there ought to be many more unseats and falls at Tipperary than at Sandown.

Fall-unseat ratios are higher on heavy and softer ground than they are on good or firmer. Some courses (Perth, for example) now avoid racing during the winter, while others never race in the summer.

Some tracks have much bigger circumferences than others. Chepstow, Down Royal and Exeter are all nearly two miles round, whereas Fakenham is barely a mile. Falls and unseats also occur more often in strongly-run affairs (and in bigger fields) than steadily-run ones. Low-grade horses tend to fall or unseat relatively more often than better horses, while low-grade horses are more likely to be ridden by lesser riders, not least on a day when there are several fixtures taking place.

Another factor that is often overlooked is that some tracks attract more runners with an ‘x’ attached to their Timeform rating (signifying a horse with jumping issues) than others. Cartmel, Newcastle and Fakenham – of the tracks still racing – have attracted the highest percentage of runners with the ‘x’ symbol. Aintree (as might be imagined) and Ascot have attracted the fewest. After all, who would run a notably poor jumper in the Grand National? The fences might be less formidable than they once were, but there are still 30 of them (usually) to be jumped. 

To try and extract a more representative picture, however, we need to widen the scope of the query by increasing the sample size beyond those horses that have fallen or unseated.

We’ll widen the scope by making greater use of the ‘x’ that appears in the in-play symbols column available in Timeform Race Passes, which indicates an error-strewn round of jumping. After all, not all falls or unseats are the product of bad jumping and an error-strewn round does not always result in a fall or unseat. By doing this, adjusting so we don’t double count those horses that have also fallen or unseated, we can then – after removing from the count those horses that presented themselves beforehand as ‘known bad jumpers’ – come up with a more wide-ranging assessment of how each course draws out mistakes from ‘clean’ jumpers as well as fallers and unseats. Doing this for the same 10-year period gives us the figures below.

The racing landscape isn’t the same now as it was in 2010, however, so if we restrict the data only to the last five years (post January 1, 2016) we get the following table

Overall, the Grand National course at Aintree is still the course that brings out most mistakes and falls/unseats per runner, though the post-2016 figure (37.17%) is, as expected, a fair bit less than for the complete period. The Old course at Cheltenham features much more prominently in both mistake-led tables than the one restricted just to falls and unseats, as would be expected of the premier jumps racecourse in the country and one long regarded as a stiff test of jumping. Similar remarks apply to the Mildmay course at Aintree as well as Leopardstown and Kempton, while Newbury and Newcastle have long had a reputation for being tracks with testing fences.

Some of the other ‘tough’ tracks might come as something of a surprise, however. For example, Fakenham features highly in all three tables. Its prominent place is likely a consequence of its acute tightness with one fence coming up barely 100 yards after taking a near-90 degree turn.

One course that has more recently become a much harder jumping test is Ludlow. The Shropshire track has made a well-publicised effort in recent years to attract better horses by increasing prize-money substantially and that has maybe contributed to the rising incidence of mistakes with more races being run at a faster pace around what is a very sharp track. The first fence in the straight comes very quickly after turning for home and is particularly tricky (much the same can be said about Thurles, where the second last – the first in the straight immediately coming off a near 4% downhill gradient – regularly causes problems). Fairyhouse and Punchestown figured just outside the top 10 assessed solely on falls and unseats but dropped down the list when mistakes were also included.

Hexham and Carlisle are well-known ‘easy jumping’ courses but arguably neither is as easy as Lingfield, while one might have expected Uttoxeter to be tougher given it is the home of Midlands Grand National. Sandown, with its famous line of seven fences down the back, is widely perceived as a tough test but it falls just outside the easy ‘top 10’ on account of the fact it attracts largely established jumpers. Naas has good claims to be considered the easiest jumping course in Ireland. Indeed, Naas is arguably an even easier jumping test than the figures suggest as it is second only to Tipperary in the number of novice races it stages relative to non-novice races.

Also read:

Graeme North's pointers to follow

Simon Rowlands: the value of sectionals over jumps

Timeform racecourse guides