2025 Champion Chase Stats That Matter – DS
2025 Champion Chase Stats That Matter
The stats delivered big style at last year’s Cheltenham Festival. We backed Captain Guinness for this race at 20s, Protektorat for the Ryanair at 20s and the stats also uncovered the winner of the Stayers’ Hurdle and three of the first four home in the Gold Cup. Not bad, eh. We’ll cover the same four races in the next four weeks, Dave Stevos’ 2025 Champion Chase Stats That Matter preview is below.
Age
As ever, age will be the first statistic we use to narrow the field. Since the year 2000, only three horses younger than 7yo have won this race and just three horses aged older than 9yo have won it. So, the stats say that to be the Champion Chaser, you need to be aged 7yo, 8yo or 9yo.
The rank outsider Blood Destiny is the only 6yo in the field so a line is immediately put through him. At the other end of the spectrum Jungle Boogie, Edwardstone and the 2023 and 2024 winners Energumene (just a 10/1 shot this year) and Captain Guinness are all too old to win this race, according to the statistics.
Five down, fifteen to go. Next up, we’ll use course form to narrow the field further.
Cut: Blood Destiny, Jungle Boogie, Edwardstone, Energumene, Captain Guinness
Course Form
The vast majority of Champion Chase winners since 2000 have ticked the course form box. In 2022, Energumene became just the third horse in 24 years to win this race on his first visit to Prestbury Park. Having experience of jumping these fences at breakneck speed is clearly crucial, so at this stage we’ll count out horses that have yet to run over fences here and also those who have run in at least one chase here and failed to place.
The highest profile casualty at this stage is the King George runner up, Il Est Francais. His only two UK runs have come at Kempton so he falls by the wayside. Solness, on a hat-trick of Grade 1 chase wins, ran down the field in the Grand Annual last year on his only previous visit to Cheltenham so unfortunately, he is discounted at this stage too.
Marine Nationale won here over hurdles but has never run in a chase here so he’s another one to fall by the wayside, as does JPR One who has unseated and finished seventh in his two previous chase starts at Cheltenham. Master Chewy and Quilixios are another two outsiders that fall victim to this statistic and so does Senecia.
Cut: Il Est Francais; Solness; Marine Nationale; JPR One; Master Chewy; Quilixios; Senecia
Graded Wins
The first two stats have eliminated twelve horses, now we’ll use graded form to whittle down the field even further. Since the turn of the century every single winner of this race had won at either Grade 1 or Grade 2 level beforehand.
That means it is the end of the road for Matata, whose November C&D win came in a class 2 handicap. The Welsh challenger Libberty Hunter also gets the chop at this stage as both of his course wins also came in handicap company. That leaves us with six final contenders, so who makes the final cut?
Cut: Matata; Libberty Hunter
The Final Cut
So, after all that, we are left with six final contenders. Favourite backers can rest easy because Jonbon has made it to the final cut. A non-runner in this last year, it is a slight concern that all three of his career defeats have come at this venue, including two at the Festival, but this looks a relatively weak renewal of the Champion Chase and if he is ever going to win it, this is the year it will happen.
Both Banbridge and Djelo have made it this far but the former horse is probably Gold Cup bound and Djelo, who lowered the colours of Protektorat in the Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon, will probably run in the Ryanair (he’s 20/1 for that and 50/1 for this).
That leaves us with El Fabiolo, who can’t jump, and Gaelic Warrior, who trailed in 14l behind Solness at the Dublin Racing Festival. Given that Gaelic Warrior is more likely to complete the course, he is taken to chase Jonbon home.
Found A Fifty is the only other survivor. He is the last horse to have beaten Solness, in a Grade 2 at Navan, and while he was pulled up at Leopardstown over Xmas, it transpired afterwards that he had a snotty nose so he had a valid excuse.
Now, he is also entered in the Ryanair so he may not run here but he ran a good race to chase home Gaelic Warrior in the Arkle last year and if he takes his chance, he could sneak a place at big odds.
It looks like Jonbon’s race to lose though and he is very hard to oppose.
