REVE DE SIVOLA (38, pace adjusted 41) is one of the best staying hurdlers of recent years. He demonstrated this once more when winning the Grade 1 Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot for the third year in a row.

Reve De Sivola set a rather ordinary pace, moving well, but had to be continuously scrubbed along after being asked to quicken approaching the third last. This is understandable as they reached the finish from that point just a fifth of a second slower than they managed in the much shorter Ladbroke Hurdle on the same card.

Coming up to the last flight Reve De Sivola looked sure to get beaten as he’d been headed by Zarkandar, who was by then in a clear lead and moving much better. However, Reve De Sivola staged a strong rally as Zarkandar started to tire and just got up on the line.

The big question now is for how long Reve De Sivola will be able to hold his form. He managed to do that as a novice hurdler well enough to win his first Grade 1 at the Punchestown Festival in late April. But novice races are invariably much more slowly run in the early stages. Since then he’s only won once in 12 tries after December and never after January.

The key to Reve De Sivola’s prospects for the rest of the season may well depend on whether he skips the Cleeve Hurdle in January.

After Reve De Sivola won last year’s Long Walk Hurdle trainer Nick Williams said: “He had an unusually hard race in the Cleeve (last season) and won´t go there again."

He was referring to Reve De Sivola’s loss of form after winning the Cleeve Hurdle in 2013. Nonetheless he ended up running the horse once more in the Cleeve Hurdle and the result was another regression in form for the rest of the season.

The problem with the Cleeve Hurdle is that it’s run at Cheltenham where the steep uphill finish tends to produce far fewer races where the early pace is slow. It’s certainly been strongly run in each of the last two seasons.

Reve De Sivola seems able to recover quite quickly from a race where he’s able to go just an ordinary pace and then quicken, as he has in the last two Long Walk Hurdles. It’s the strongly-run races that present a problem.

If he were mine I’d either take Reve De Sivola straight to the Cheltenham Festival from this race or avoid running him at Cheltenham altogether in the Cleeve or World Hurdles. Either option would give him a better shot of holding his form for the rest of the season.

TIRED RAPIDLY

Ascot runner-up Zarkandar (38, pace adjusted 41) looked all over the winner almost all the way up the straight. But he tired rapidly on the run-in to get caught (I don’t buy the idea that he idled – he looked tired to me).

It’s hard to get away from the idea that stamina is a big issue for Zarkandar. He’s done well over three miles when the early pace has been moderate. But he’s been way more successful in less testing circumstances.

I think he’s best over two and a half miles or less on a tight track, and two miles and a furlong or less on a galloping one. If one half-length loss had been a win, he would have won nine out of nine completed starts in these circumstances outside the Champion Hurdle.

The other interesting performance in the Ascot race was put up by Dell‘ Arca (26, pace adjusted 29). He was the only horse travelling anything near as well as Zarkandar when the pace picked up but failed to make any progress up the straight.

The most likely explanation for Dell’ Arca’s sub-par run is that he didn’t stay the marathon distance. However, it’s perfectly possible the small field was the cause.

As I’ve noted before Dell’ Arca has shown seriously smart form in fields of 15 or more. In smaller fields he seems to see too much daylight which causes him to idle and wander. It could be that the application of some kind of headgear (most likely cheekpieces) would curb this tendency. Or maybe it’s something Dell’ Arca will grow out of. Either way I continue to see him as a potential Grade 1 winner and will be very interested to see his next run or two.