JANUARY is the month associated with the bringing in of the new and, so far as National Hunt racing is concerned, several exciting novice hurdlers have broken cover with a purpose since the new year.

Notable among them are two that began life in point-to-points and are owned by Joe and Marie Donnelly, Asterion Forlonge and Shishkin. Both scored impressively with what looked like plenty in hand, but whereas Asterion Forlonge went under the radar to some degree by dint of winning on the same card as Envoi Allen, Shishkin had no such foil at last week’s meeting at Newbury. Visually impressive performances don’t always translate to the clock but in this instance it certainly did.

Shishkin’s winning time was the fastest of the three two-mile hurdle races and by itself was worth a timefigure of 128. There’s more than that to time analysis these days, of course, and when analysis of his finishing speed (108.4%, measured over the last four furlongs or so) is incorporated, his time performance can be upgraded to 150.

Even then, though, that 22lb upgrade doesn’t tell the full story; measured from the final flight his finishing speed was well above 110%, for which his upgrade could have been another 7lb or so higher. Those figures compare very favourably with those of the current Supreme Novices’ Hurdle favourite Abacadabras (low 150s on timefigure/upgrade combination). It’s no surprise that Shishkin is now second favourite in many places.

Stood out

Thurles isn’t a course from which Timeform return timefigures (the historical data wasn’t robust enough to allow that) but that’s not to say valuable time-based information can’t be sourced from events there. And one performance really stood out at last Sunday’s meeting - that from Monkfish in the staying novice hurdle.

Three milers will generally run the same distance of ground more slowly than two milers; the number of seconds it usually takes both to run a furlong tells us that.

On that basis, Monkfish, after allowing for the difference in ability between himself and Pakens Rock, ought to have covered the distance from the first hurdle jumped in the two-mile races to the finish in something around two seconds slower than Pakens Rock; instead, he ran the whole section nearly two seconds faster, including all of the sections from three out, two out and (most notably of all given he wasn’t asked a question) the last.

After factoring the small difference in weights carried, that all adds up to Monkfish’s coming out approaching 150. If anyone isn’t aware, that’s the level Minella Indo ran to when winning the 2019 Albert Bartlett.

The current Triumph Hurdle favourite winner Goshen showed his face at Ascot last week but neither his performance - he dived right at several of his hurdles, even the ones he managed to jump fluently - nor his winning timefigure (104, would have been a bit higher had he not been eased) deserved any forward movement in his Cheltenham price.

His previous wide-margin win at Sandown (not unusual in itself given the time of year and level of opposition he faced on bad ground) was won in a combined timefigure/upgrade of 135 and that level is short of what will be needed at Cheltenham. He needs to do more.