Last season's race

• Winner: Deep Cave
• Jockey: Jack Tudor
• Trainer: Christian Williams
• Owner: Mr Caolan Brendan Woods
• Age: 7 Weight: 11st 2lbs
• Starting Price: 28/1
• Season Form Figures: 105546
• Previous Best: 1st - Jacques Peillon Hurdle, Clairefontaine (July 2024)

By Paul Jones

Nine of the last 19 runnings have gone the way of a novice, so in common with the 2m4f handicap at this fixture, this race has proved a very happy hunting ground for first-season hurdlers. The four successful novices who won between 2006-2009 were all were stepping up in trip, as was Fountain’s Windfall in 2017 and Party Business in 2022.

The best novice guide has been the EBF Novices' Handicap Hurdle Final at Sandown a month earlier, won earlier this season by Scorpio Rising, a novice handicap hurdle that regularly contains a clutch of highly promising looking chasers in the making and provided the winner three years running from 2007-2009 and also in 2014.

Over twice the length of time 18 of the last 37 winners ran at the Cheltenham Festival so, again more or less 50%. As this is effectively the Aintree equivalent race of the Pertemps Final (minus the endless qualifying races), it is no surprise to see that handicap at Cheltenham have the best overall record featuring six winners since 1988. Nine of the last 16 winners of that final won this season by Supremely West then lined up here with Cape Tribulation completing the double in 2012 and Call The Cops was only beaten a head. The last two winners of the final to run here, Good Time Johnny and Monmiral, went on to finish fourth and fifth, respectively.

Eight of the 37 winners had been successful last time out, which sounds around par for the course for a competitive handicap, however, that improves to a far more significant seven of the last 20 if we just look at the last couple of decades. Twenty-four winners had won at some point earlier in the season.

Only five of the last 27 winners had not run at least four times earlier in the season and as many as 11 winners had run over fences earlier in the season, three of which on their last start.

Just two five-year-olds have won, with those being Escartefigue (who was better at Aintree than anywhere else) and Time For Rupert - and both went on to make top-notch chasers.

The last of Ireland’s three wins came 10 years ago, so this is a handicap hurdle that they haven't fared as well in compared to many others in Britain in the spring.

Not only has Dan Skelton won two of the last three runnings but he had the third in 2024 and also registered a 1-2 in the 2019 running when Aux Ptits Soins beat Tommy Rapper. Jonjo O'Neill is best known for his stayers, and he has won this race four times in the last 22 runnings, twice with novices. The well-backed winner in 2018, Mr Big Shot, was having just his second start of the season (as was the 2021 successful favourite, Hometown Boy) and was David Pipe’s second winner of the race.

Mr Big Shot won as the 7/1 favourite seven years ago and West Balboa won as the 9/2 market leader in 2023. Three successive favourites obliged before Time For Rupert won at 50/1, the race's biggest-priced winner, and it was the gambled-on Battle Group (also Pipe) that gave favourites another victory in 2011, albeit as the co-favourite of three at 8/1 leading home another co-favourite in second. Three favourites went in during the 1990s and six in total have finished second, so it has been relatively punter-friendly given how competitive it is.