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This year’s renewal will be the sixth running as a Grade 1 race. I would argue that last year’s winner, Silviniaco Conti was the first top-notcher to win it for 13 years, though, and the main reason for this is that the highest class staying chasers who had a hard race in the Gold Cup either bypass the race or had left their best form behind at Prestbury Park. Plus the best of the Irish tend to wait for Punchestown. That was Paul Nicholls’s third win in this race but he has also saddled six losing favourites in the last 11 years. Regards the Irish, when First Lieutenant was giving them their fifth success two years ago, he was putting an end to a three-year spell when the winner bypassed the Gold Cup, joining Our Vic as the second Betfair Bowl winner to have run well in the Ryanair.
Naturally the Gold Cup has to be the starting point and 20 of the 31 Bowl winners took their chance in the blue riband of the jumps season. Although Gold Cup contenders have won marginally under two-thirds of the runnings of this race, it has proven wise to oppose horses who endured a very hard race in the blue riband. Of the last 11 placed horses in the Gold Cup to run here, only Exotic Dancer has won and all 11 would have been very much to the fore in the betting. Even Gold Cup-winning legends such as Dawn Run and Desert Orchid both fell in this race on their next start and only one top-three finisher in the Gold Cup has won since 1997 so I can’t have it that a very hard race in the Gold Cup doesn’t leave some sort of mark on most horses, though there is an extra week for horses to recover this year with a month between Cheltenham and Aintree which happens around once every ten years. Denman (fifth of six beaten 25 lengths as 5/4 favourite) and Imperial Commander (unseated rider but struggling down the back straight when sent off 11/8 favourite) and Kauto Star (beaten at 4/7) have been other well-documented, recent examples of putting in below-par displays after their huge Gold Cup efforts. 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 plenty for Aintree.
Although Gold Cup contenders have won marginally under two-thirds of the runnings of this race, it has proven wise to oppose horses who endured a very hard race in the blue riband.
Of the last 18 Betfred Bowl winners, nine finished in the first four in the King George VI Chase earlier in the season, positions this season filled by Silviniaco Conti, Dynaste (injured), Al Ferof and Champagne Fever. It is no great surprise that horses with top Kempton chase form fare well at Aintree as both are flat tracks with a long run between the final two fences which requires fluent jumping and suits horses with a combination of speed and stamina. So they are similar then......with the glaring exception that Kempton is right-handed! Barton Bank, Desert Orchid and Wayward Lad and Silviniaco Conti, all previous winners of this race, won ten King Georges between them and the dual Betfred Bowl winner, Docklands Express, also won two editions of what is now the BetBright Chase at Kempton. The Lexus Chase has been Ireland’s best guide featuring four of the last 12 winners.
The Hennessy Gold Cup won by Many Clouds is a handicap that has come to the fore in a big way recently as a good guide featuring three of the last six Betfred Bowl winners. All three finished in the first three at Newbury. Many Clouds also won the BetBright Cup Chase at Cheltenham on Trials Days and if he takes his chance then he would be bidding to emulate Grey Abbey and Exotic Dancer in the last ten years, who also won that race at Cheltenham in January before taking this prize. 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 which bodes well for Menorah who bypassed Cheltenham for Aintree.
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 Betfred Bowl since it was first run in 1984. From 31 runnings, horses aged 10+ have won on 14 occasions which is even more of an eyebrow-raiser when we consider that they have not only been comprehensively outnumbered but have also been totally unrepresented on occasions. Contrast this with the record of horses 10+ 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 as how many Grade 1 or Grade 2 races can you name where horses aged in double figures have won almost 50% of runnings from three decades worth of evidence?
I would not go quite as far to say that this race has been a front runner’s paradise but for 13 of the 31 runnings to have been won by the pacesetter is one heck of a strike rate. Successful betting can be very much about knowing when the time is right to leave the best horses alone and this race appeals as one such instance as discussed in the Gold Cup analysis earlier. The combined second and third-favourites obviously get an extra chance than just the favourite of prevailing but to have won 12 of the last 22 winnings between them still catches the eye. Many favourites will arrive here off the back of having endured a hard race in the Gold Cup, a run that heavily contributed to their market position and, as I have already argued a big run in the Gold Cup can be viewed as a negative pointer for this race coming soon so afterwards, so I am not surprised that favourites have therefore under-performed. That said, Follow The Plan’s 50/1 success three 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.
