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Majborough Puzzle: will the pieces fall back into place?
By Andy Stephens
Last Updated: Mon 27 Apr 2026
There are thousands of horses in the RaceiQ database but none have created anything like so much chatter as the scores generated by the jumping of Majborough.
We know where we stand with him. When it all clicks, the six-year-old is untouchable. But when it doesn’t, he can unravel.
His past two performances provide a perfect snapshot of when he’s good, he’s very good indeed, but when he’s bad, he can look horrid.
Majborough lit up the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown at the start of February, pummelling five rivals who included two Champion Chase heroes in Marine Nationale and Energumene.
It was a rare exhibition of pace, power and poise. He was on a different plane, resembling one of those on several occasions, and won by 19 lengths.
The first half of last month’s Champion Chase seemed to be going the same way, but then the fences started getting in Majborough’s way and he ended up beating one home.
He’s a big, powerful unit, who Willie Mullins identified as having the physique of a potential Gold Cup challenger the day he walked into Closutton as a three-year-old.
But even his mighty frame was shaken by the calamitous blunder he made three from home in the biggest two mile race of them all.
His story moves on, and none of us know what to expect from him in the William Hill Chase at Punchestown on Tuesday.
Will we get the version of him who devours the obstacles and opposition, or the version that beats himself? The only certainty is that he will almost certainly jump to his left, as his wont on right-handed tracks.
RaceiQ has ended up getting sucked firmly into conversations revolving around him because the metrics keep saying that there are few steeplechasers in training capable of getting from A to B in quicker time. Many refuse to believe it.
Forget that he can at times looks scruffy or awkward, RaceiQ does not award extra points for artistic impression. All it cares about is speed, on multiple levels.
It’s all about what happens in the Jumping Envelope, 30 metres before and after each fence. And with Majborough, there is no hanging about.
Overall time in the Envelope is recorded, as are entry speeds, exit speeds plus speed lost negotiating the fence and speed recovery times (the time it takes a horse takes to recover to the average race pace after a jump, averaged across each jump in the race).
This feeds into a Jump Index score, out of ten, for every fence, and an overall score, plus lengths gained/lost, measured against all the other runners in the contest.
There has been a lot of focus on Majborough’s occasional howlers, but less attention on just how quick he usually is.
He’s had eight races over fences, five of them at Grade One level, and his Jump Index scores have been 9.0, 9.6, 7.8, 7.9, 9.0, 9.1, 9.5 and 7.9, helping him gain an aggregate of 61.55 lengths. Anything over 7 is not bad, so we are into exalted territory here.
In total, he has jumped 88 fences and gained ground at 67 of them (76.13%). Even more tellingly, he has been the most efficient of the whole field at 47 of them (53.40%).
On the flip side, he has made four errors that have been significant enough cost him a length or more. And, unfortunately for him, they have all been at the Cheltenham Festival: two in the Arkle, two in the Champion Chase. Each have come in the second half of the contest.
Naturally, there will be a lot of focus on what went wrong at Cheltenham last time .
It all began at the start, when there was initially an element of organised chaos, then just chaos.
Mark Walsh was determined to boss things, as he had at Leopardstown, and when Majborough missed a beat when the tapes rose, he resisted going for Plan B and instead bustled him along, lighting a fuse.
Majborough ended up galloping towards fence one, about nine seconds into the race, at 35.46mph, the quickest any horse approached an obstacle at the meeting.
He winged it, as he did the third, fourth and fifth, but the revs were up far too high. He attacked the second at 34.38mph, the third at 33.53mph, and the fourth at 31.75mph. That was never going to be sustainable.
The winner, Il Etait Temps, sat out the back and entered the first four at 34.28mph, 32.67mph, 31.84mph and 30.87mph. In other words, between between 0.88mph and 1.71mph slower.
Majborough swiped 6.46 lengths over the first eight fences but his error at the ninth (five out), when surrendering 1.31 lengths, hinted he was vulnerable and when he walked through three out the battle was well and truly lost.
He lost 8.71mph and his Speed Recovery Time was 3.42sec. In truth, he never recovered at all.
He was out on his feet at the last, when it took him another 4.14sec to recover. His aggregate Speed Recovery Time over the first six fences had been just 2.72sec. That’s his stock in trade. In, out, shake the others all about.
To add further context, he completed the first mile at Cheltenham, on officially good to soft ground, in 1min 54.30sec. When he won at the Punchestown Festival last year, on a yielding surface, he spent a leisurely 2min 7.69sec doing the same. A difference of 13.39sec.
That was then, this is now. There are no other habitual front-runners in the line up on Tuesday, and there is the possibility of Majborough getting an easyish time at the head of affairs, if Walsh wants one.
Also, Cheltenham and Punchestown are chalk and cheese in terms of jumping requirements.
In the Champion Chase, Majborough had tackled two fences before 20 seconds were up. At Punchestown last year, he was still approaching the first at this time.
And he jumped the seventh at Cheltenham after about 1min 40sec, whereas at Punchestown 12 months ago that obstacle came up after about 2min 23sec.
So, more time to measure fences, more time to get organised. Less chaos.
Overall, his Career Jump Index score is 8.7. The data tells us his two main rivals on Tuesday, Il Etait Temps (7.5) and Marine Nationale (7.4), are inferior in that department.
Nobody noticed, but Il Etait Temps lost ground at seven of the first ten fences at Cheltenham. And, overall, he gained less than Majborough. The conservative ride he got made all the difference, with things rather falling in his lap.
Which of the three big guns will be at their peak for the season curtain closer? Just how much ground will Majborough sacrifice jumping out to his left?
Having been sent off at odds on at Cheltenham, he is an easy to back 11-4 third favourite this time. At that price, I won;'t be able to resist sticking with him, being fully aware it might not be a straightforward watch.
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