WHEN analysing races we currently have much more on which to base assessments than just the visual performance and the distance by which the winner won. Winning an all-aged Grade 1 by 57 lengths, you would think, should have the wow factor.

When Kauto Star won the 2009 King George by 36 lengths from Maison Du Berlais, he earned the term “magnificent” in the post-race comments and a rating of 193.

On the visual evidence, Bristol De Mai beating Grade 1 winners Cue Card, Outlander and Tea For Two in the Betfair Chase at Haydock should have seen him hailed the new star. But most observers were sceptical.

BHA handicappers took it at face value at raised him 13lb to a mark of 173. It put him ahead of the Gold Cup winner Sizing John on 169. Simon Rowlands’ time figures also stack up. Bristol De Mai’s time measures up and surpasses anything else recorded on the day. He’s the fastest staying chaser around.

So was it too good to be true? Can an affinity for a particular track, or indeed an ability to handle very soft ground, elevate a horse, who had previously looked to be slightly below the best, to top the lot?

Can we expect him to reproduce this effort? Instinct still pushes us to believe that when something looks too good to be true, as in Bristol’s romp, it normally is.

He ended last season fifth of seven behind the same Tea For Two and Cue Card at Aintree in April. Over the last three years his Grade 1 efforts have included placing third in a very weak Grade 1 juvenile hurdle at Aintree, second to Black Hercules in the Grade 1 JLT Novices, and seventh in the Gold Cup, beaten 20 lengths behind Sizing John last March. These were his best efforts in the big end-of-season contests that took place on spring ground.

It’s not a right-hand/left-hand bias as with Desert Orchid.

Even Denman’s most fervent fans might accept that ‘The Tank’ could never have won a King George by 36 lengths. He had all the ability but it wasn’t his track.

Going back to Bristol De Mai, perhaps the performance with which to compare his Haydock rout is Carvill’s Hill’s defeat of Party Politics and Aquilifer under 11st 12lb in the 1991 Coral Welsh National Handicap Chase. There, the injury-prone winner found a big galloping track with two long oval bends, which did not put pressure on his jumping, made to measure, and he simply galloped on relentlessly to a wide-margin win. Under different conditions and extra pressure at Cheltenham, he was found out.

Excluding Kauto Star’s second Gold Cup victory, you have to go back to See More Business to find a horse who was previously beaten at Cheltenham come back and win the big one, as Djakadam’s supporters have found out to their cost.

Taking in likely ground conditions, his previous form and the fact that Gold Cup winners have tended to be first-timers in the race, one is tempted to resist the 12/1 on offer about Bristol De Mai for next March.

He may be the best staying chaser around but let’s wait and see for now.