Last season's race

• Winner: Gaelic Warrior
• Jockey: Mr Patrick W Mullins
• Trainer: W P Mullins
• Owner: Mrs S Ricci
• Age: 7 Weight: 11st 10lbs
• Starting Price: 11/4
• Season Form Figures: 223
• Previous Best: 1st - Arkle Challenge Trophy Novices' Chase (Grade 1), Cheltenham (March 2024)

By Paul Jones

Won 12 months ago by this season’s runaway Gold Cup winner Gaelic Warrior, this year’s running will be the sixteenth as a Grade 1 race. It’s been won by many other proper top-notchers like Silviniaco Conti, Cue Card, Might Bite, Clan Des Obeaux and Shishkin but there were also less memorable successes for Tea For Two, Follow The Plan, Nacarat and Madison Du Berlais.

The principal reason why some horses shy of Grade 1 quality come out on top is that others endured a hard race in the Gold Cup, so they either bypass the race a few weeks later or, if they do take part, then have left their best form behind at Prestbury Park. In addition, the best of the Irish tend to wait for Punchestown these days, which is where we are expecting to see Gaelic Warrior next to aid Willie Mullins’ Irish Trainers’ Championship bid rather than attempt to defend his title at Aintree.

Naturally, the Gold Cup has to be the starting point and 26 of the 41 winners took their chance in staying chasing’s championship event at Cheltenham. Although Gold Cup contenders have won around two-thirds of the runnings, it can prove to be profitable to oppose horses that endured a very hard race on the final day of the Cheltenham Festival. Of the last 17 placed horses in the Gold Cup to run here, only Exotic Dancer, Might Bite and Gerri Colombe have won and all 17 would have been very much to the fore in the betting with many disappointing in a major way. After he was second in the Gold Cup, Nicky Henderson was quick to point Jango Baie at the Bowl, but he did underperform at Aintree last spring off the back of winning the Arkle.

Prior to Gerri Colombe’s victory two years ago, the chief Gold Cup representatives from the previous two years, Protektorat and Conflated, who both finished third at Cheltenham, were beaten 26l as favourite and pulled up here to give the most recent examples.

Even Gold Cup winning legends such as Dawn Run and Desert Orchid both fell in this race on their next start after winning at Cheltenham. Other high-profile examples of Gold Cup principals underperforming in the Bowl are Denman (fifth of six beaten 25 lengths as 5/4 favourite), Imperial Commander (unseated rider but struggling down the back straight when sent off 11/8 favourite) and Kauto Star (beaten at 4/7) after their huge efforts at Cheltenham the previous month.

However, as the record of Gold Cup participants remains strong despite the higher-profile failures, I would still argue that we should look very closely at the Gold Cup also-rans that were spared a really hard race by not being ridden right out to the line therefore leaving something back for Aintree. Take the 2016, 2017 and 2019 winners, Cue Card, Tea For Two and Kemboy, for example who departed three out and as early as the second and first fence respectively, so they were spared a lung-bursting finish.

I would not go quite as far to say that this race has been a front runner’s paradise but for 15 of the 41 runnings to have been won by the pacesetter from the outset is one heck of a strike rate, so in-running punters take note.

Of the last 28 winners, as many as half had finished in the first four in the King George VI Chase earlier in the season, positions this season filled by The Jukebox Man, Banbridge, Gaelic Warrior and Jango Baie, where only half a length split the quartet. It is no great surprise that horses with top Kempton chase form fare well at Aintree, as both are flat tracks which require fluent jumping and suit horses with a combination of speed and stamina. So, they are fairly similar then...with the glaring exception that Kempton is right-handed!

Barton Bank, Desert Orchid, Wayward Lad, Silviniaco Conti, Cue Card, Might Bite and Clan Des Obeaux, all previous winners of this race, won 14 King George's between them and the dual Bowl winner, Docklands Express, also won two editions of what is now the Ladbrokes Trophy Handicap Chase at Kempton won by Lookaway in February. So, Kempton form is certainly a positive.
 
Two winners of the Cotswold Chase went on to win here in the not-so-distant past (Grey Abbey and Exotic Dancer), but it looks like L’Homme Presse will contest the Grand National instead. Grey Abbey and Nacarat both won the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby in the autumn earlier in the same season as winning this race and, a little further back, Barton Bank was second in the Charlie Hall the season he won this race and Our Vic won the Charlie Hall in 2006 two years before he won the Bowl. This season’s Charlie Hall was won by the now-injured Djelo who beat Pic D’Orhy.
 
The Savills Chase has been Ireland’s best guide, featuring six of the last 22 winners, which also means that the Irish have won five of the last 13 runnings. Affordale Fury landed a big gamble to win this season’s Savills.

On the age front, whereas the Gold Cup winner has not been aged above ten since way back in 1969 yet as many as eight horses aged 11+ have won the Bowl since it was first run in 1984. Horses aged 10 or older have won on 16 occasions, which is even more of an eyebrow-raiser when we consider that they have not only been comprehensively outnumbered, but they have also been totally unrepresented on occasions. Contrast that with the record of horses aged 10 or older in the Gold Cup, for example, where only Cool Dawn of the older contingent has come out on top since 1992. I’m not saying lump on the golden oldies, but I am saying pay them an awful lot more respect that you normally would in other Grade 1 races.

I am not surprised that favourites have under-performed as a whole given the earlier Gold Cup stats. That said, Follow The Plan’s 50/1 success 14 years ago was somewhat of a shock to the system, maybe even more so than when Beau Ranger took advantage of Dawn Run’s first-fence exit to beat Wayward Lad at 40/1 in 1986.

When Clan Des Obeaux took this prize for a second time, he was giving Paul Nicholls his sixth winner of the Bowl, though he has also saddled six losing favourites in the last 21 years.