Mike Vince takes us on a stroll down memory lane as one of the hardest punting puzzles in the Flat calendar looms large on the horizon.
What’s the name of the handicap run every October which legendary trainers Martin Pipe, Mary Reveley, Nicky Henderson, Willie Mullins and Philip Hobbs have all won twice?
Cue frantic research of the big races at Cheltenham’s opening meeting, or the big races at Chepstow this weekend...
It is of course the race that starts in one county and ends in another - the Cesarewitch - the second leg of the 'autumn double' and, nursery apart, the only handicap on Newmarket’s Future Champions card this Saturday.
It’s all thanks to a gift of some £300 to the Jockey Club that punters have for years called in at the takeaway and burnt the midnight oil the night before in search of the winner - and in the past decade they have included a 25/1 shot, a 50/1 outsider and twice, in consecutive years (and no surprise the race was sponsored at the time by a bookmaker) a 66/1 shot.
That gift was made by a Russian heir in the 1830s and so the great staying handicap was born, at about the same time as the Cambridgeshire - which hosts the start of this race before it meanders into Suffolk but doesn’t play host to a yard of the race that bears its name.
In the late 19th century, amazingly, three horses did complete the autumn double, but it has not been tried in modern times.
It’s the race that the Brian Meehan-trained Aaim To Prosper won twice in three years. In 2010 at 16/1 under Louis Phillipe Beuzelin and two years later with Kieren Fallon up he was returned more than four times that price.
And it’s the race where Frankie Dettori produced one of his greatest Newmarket rides. In 2011 the Italian, who joked he had been trying for more than 20 years to win it, took the mount on Jamie Osborne’s Never Can Tell, and went to post in the second colours of Dr Marwan Koukash.
He had a problem - it was called stall 36, which in those days was on the wide outside, almost halfway to Cambridge.
What followed was a fantastic master class in getting to the rail and even ending up in the centre of the Rowley Mile en route to an unforgettable victory.
So if your fancy is drawn 1 on Saturday - Nil Desperandum.
And, mention of Saturday and the 2020 renewal, here are two stats. After Low Sun and Stratum last year, Willie Mullins is looking to win it for a third consecutive year - getting back-to-back winners hadn’t been done in modern times let alone a treble!
And Silvestre de Sousa has been the most successful jockey of late, winning three of the last seven runnings.
This remains one of the great old fashioned handicaps - but it's one of those races where whatever you fancy, there are probably 30-plus reasons why you are on the wrong one!
Time to order that takeaway for Friday night!