LAST year’s Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase winner Handstands was back in action last Sunday, and whilst some people may have been underwhelmed by his defeat, the data highlights why it is forgivable, writes Page Fuller.

He’s never been the most consistent jumper of a fence, and took no time in reminding us of that when lining up in the Colin Parker Memorial Chase at Carlisle. After falling on his chase debut last season, he jumped superbly in victory at Sandown next time, recording a jump index of 8.5 out of 10.

He made more of a meal of his next victory in the Towton Novices’ Chase, only scoring 6.8 out of 10, before recording an 8 out of 10 jumping performance in the Scilly Isles. Hopefully that has successfully illustrated the point.

The relevance of all this is that when he ran on Sunday, it soon became clear that his jumping was not on a ‘going’ day. He was overly careful over his fences, losing more than 5mph on average, and recorded the worst jump index of his career so far. A score of 6.2 out of 10 is not good.

Resplendent Grey capitalised on this and, despite not being the fastest jumper himself, only lost 3.78mph on average at his fences, giving him a massive advantage over Handstands. In total he managed to gain about eight lengths on Handstands from jumping alone. Considering he only won by three quarters of a length, it definitely made the difference.

As mentioned above, we know Handstands is capable of far better. While his mark of 157 may prove tough to compete off in a handicap, he’s only six years old, and it will be exciting to watch him develop as the season progresses.