Timeform highlight the key trends to keep in mind for the Cheltenham Gold Cup at the Cheltenham Festival.
Cheltenham Gold Cup
15:30 Cheltenham, Friday
A Plus Tard (Timeform weight-adjusted rating: 177) won last year’s Gold Cup by 15 lengths, the widest winning margin for nearly 30 years, but having been pulled up in the Betfair Chase on his only start in the intervening 12 months, he fails to meet the important conditions of having won, if not last time out, then at the very least this season. Not having had three or four runs this term is less of a concern because several of his rivals have had light campaigns too but a bit more of a worry is that, now aged nine, A Plus Tard is older than all bar Don Cossack among the last ten winners.
The first two in the betting, on the other hand, Galopin des Champs (189p) and Bravemansgame (184) tick all the boxes except for having run only twice each this season, though the pair have won both their starts and their respective wins last time out in the Irish Gold Cup and King George VI Chase went a long way to allaying any fears about either of them having the stamina for a Gold Cup.
Stamina certainly isn’t a concern for Grand National winner Noble Yeats (178) or last year’s National Hunt Novices' Chase winner Stattler (177p), though both lack the Grade 1 win on their CV which only one of the last ten Gold Cup winners has managed to do without. Stattler’s Festival win gives him a tick in that box, unlike Noble Yeats, but the latter does have wins on the board this term which Stattler doesn’t.
Noble Yeats and Betfair Chase winner Protektorat (180) both go to the Gold Cup on the back of a defeat in the Cotswold Chase won by Ahoy Senor (177) who is alone in ticking every box, having been runner-up in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase at last year’s Festival before his Grade 1 win in the Mildmay Novices’ at Aintree.
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