Last season's race

• Winner: She's A Saint
• Jockey: Tristan Durrell
• Trainer: Dan Skelton
• Owner: Estate Research PC Limited
• Age: 8 Weight: 10st 5lbs
• Starting Price: 25/1
• Season Form Figures: 2
• Previous Best: 2nd - Weatherbys Cheltenham Festival Betting Guide Jane Seymour Mares' Novices' Hurdle (Grade 2), Sandown (February 2023)

By Paul Jones

This handicap restricted to conditional jockeys and amateur riders used to be one of the strongest of the season in terms of trends, but it is hard to argue that it is even the same race since the removal of professional jockeys, though a few new trends are starting to emerge.

For example, since the changes, horses to run in the County Hurdle have won four of the last 16 runnings compared to being 0-48 going back to 1993, so that is now a positive rather than a huge negative.

Also, what was once the domain of very lowly-weighted horses is no longer the case with winners now successful from other areas of the handicap including Court Minstrel and Ivan Grozny winning off top weight.

Before the changes made in 2009, five and six-year-olds had won 16 of the 18 renewals but the next two winners were aged nine and seven, and we have even had two four-year-old winners - the first of which was the first favourite (or joint-favourite) to win for 19 years.

One trends-based angle that still has legs is to look closely at the Irish whose record in British 2m handicap hurdles in recent seasons has been strong. When this handicap opened the card on Grand National Day, they had a terrific record winning four times between 2000 and 2007. Although it is no longer on terrestrial television, the Irish still supplied the winner and second 14 years ago, while in 2015 their contenders passed the post in second, third and fifth. Ivan Grozny was a wide-margin winner eight years ago, leading home an Irish-trained 1-2, while Gordon Elliott’s four-year-old Chief Justice won the 2019 running.

The record of the Irish aside, the only other stat to have held up since the change is that that no front-runner has won since 1998 and that was only a five-runner race.