MOST of the time, horses catch the eye for the right reason, but one winner last week caught the eye for all of the wrong reasons, writes Page Fuller.

Rubaud made hard work of landing his hat-trick in the Elite Hurdle, and whilst a win is a win, there were plenty of alarm bells ringing from a fairly early stage in the race.

There were early signs that things were not as they should be, as he looked a little sticky even before the flag went up. This then translated to his jumping, and whilst we normally expect him to attack his hurdles with fast, slick jumping, it ended up the complete opposite.

His Jump Index of 7.3 out of 10 is the lowest he’s ever recorded in our database at Wincanton.

He’d never scored lower than 8.3 before that, and it was far lower than the 9.6 he scored in this race last year.

In hindsight, though, his Jump Index of 7.5 out of 10 at Kempton on seasonal debut was also pretty low for him, and you have to question, did his spell over fences knock his confidence?

His career Jump Index over fences is only 7.4 out of 10, and his hurdles index before Kempton was 8.6 out of 10.

Unsurprisingly, the latter has now dropped to 8.0 out of 10, and reflects two things. How fences did not come naturally to him, and how out of character this was for him over hurdles.

There are two ways of looking at it, in my opinion. Either his spell over fences has left its mark, and the Rubaud of old may be hard to recover. Or he’ll soon get back into the swing of things, and he’s sure to find some quick improvement on that performance last Saturday.