Tony McFadden provides a Cheltenham Festival stat to keep in mind for the meeting next month.
Cheltenham Stat: The last six winners of the Kim Muir Handicap Chase have been novices
The Kim Muir enjoys a much higher profile than a typical 0-145 handicap chase due to being part of the Cheltenham Festival programme, but, as with other such races of its type, the key remains trying to identify a horse that might be ahead of their mark.
Novices typically haven’t shown the handicapper the full extent of their ability and it is interesting that the last six winners of the Kim Muir have been won by horses who had not won over fences in a previous campaign.
They weren’t all first-season novices, or even especially lightly raced over fences, but they were unexposed as staying chasers and showed improved form when faced with the test of stamina that three and a quarter miles around Cheltenham provided in the Kim Muir.
Novices formed around 37% of the representatives across those six editions but, as well as providing the winners, were responsible for 58% of the horses who finished in the frame.
It’s possible that there could be a smaller pool of novices to focus on in the Kim Muir this year as the two-and-a-half-mile novice handicap chase is back on the Festival programme and, more significantly, the National Hunt Chase, over three and three-quarter miles, is being run as a handicap this year.
There is now a requirement for novices to have previously run four times over fences, as opposed to three, to qualify for open-age handicap chases at the Festival. However, that extra run may not necessarily lead to a potentially nice mark being blown, especially if it comes over a shorter distance than the Kim Muir.
It could also be significant that five of the last six winners were trained in Ireland where there’s often much greater strength in depth in novice and beginners' contests than in Britain. We’re still waiting for the entries and weights to be revealed but when they are released it might be worth paying extra close attention to Irish novice chasers unexposed over staying trips.
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.
