FLAT racing may have the international reach and (at least some of the time) the weather in its favour, but one area in which it cannot compete with the jumps is in the longevity of many of its stars.

We have just had a flat season in which a couple of leading juveniles, The Last Lion and Mehmas, have been whisked off to stud before they even had a chance to prove their worth at three.

Jump racing’s response at the weekend was to remind us of the durability of a couple of old-stagers who are still turning in high-class performances several years on from their racecourse debuts.

Cue Card won the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival way back in 2010 and should go back there next March as an 11-year-old with a tremendous chance in the Cheltenham Gold Cup judged on his magnificent win in the Betfair Chase at Haydock last Saturday.

Sire De Grugy is not quite of Cue Card’s calibre, but he made his debut in 2010 also and showed there is plenty of life in the old boy yet with an authoritative success off a BHA mark of 160 at Ascot less than an hour after the Betfair Chase had been run.

The temptation might be to dismiss Cue Card’s win as amounting to little: he had just five rivals, and the nearest at the finish, Coneygree, had been off for over a year and ran that way in the end. It is a temptation best resisted.

COMPARISONS

Time comparisons with the other two chases on the card, as well as within-race sectionals, strongly suggest that Cue Card’s win was right up there with his best.

He was 14.2s (equivalent to 59lb) faster than the 140-rated Three Faces West in a handicap over the same course and distance 35 minutes later, and about 46lb quicker than 128-rated Mysteree at a longer trip earlier on the card, with those sectionals showing just how solid the pace was in the Betfair Chase, especially on the final circuit.

That earns Cue Card a timefigure of 173, which is easily the best over chases or hurdles in Britain and Ireland this season so far, and it could well be enough to win him another King George VI Chase at Kempton Park on St Stephens Day with some of his main rivals sidelined or no longer with us.

Coneygree, who was beaten 15 lengths at the line, should run better another day, according to the sectionals as well as to anecdotal paddock study, but it is a stretch to think he will beat an on-song Cue Card.

Sire De Grugy’s timefigure for that Ascot win is a more modest 152, but that still indicates he should have some sort of a say in next month’s Tingle Creek Chase, a race he has won twice previously.