My fears for the National Hunt Chase

World politics is dire but so long as Mick Herron is writing spy novels, David Mitchell is raising laughs and Bukayo Saka is scoring goals there is joy available and I have lived to see the start of another proper jumps season at the Cheltenham Showcase meeting. Saturday’s racing did, however, provide a sharp reminder of how the Irish dominated last season’s Cheltenham Festival, winning 18 of the 27 races, including 12 of the 14 Grade One contests. Irish trainers Ian Patrick Donoghue, John McConnell, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead won four out of the seven races, and you have to wonder how hard some home-based handlers are trying when only one of the five runners in the William Hill novices hurdle came from an English yard. Even the ever-combative Paul Nicholls, 14 times our champion trainer, didn’t have a single runner on the card.

One positive for home fans was the victory for his nephew Harry Derham’s Givemefive in the Masterson Holdings Hurdle, his first at Cheltenham. Harry made good use of his six years as assistant to uncle Paul and started training on his own in 2022. Last year, at 25 per cent, he had the highest strike rate of winners to runners of any British jumps trainer. After Givemefive had scooted past Dodger Long and the odds-on Irish-trained favourite Bottler’secret he confirmed a neat piece of race-targeting: ‘We brought him in two weeks early from his summer break with just this race in mind. He was found by my cousin Megan and has been a fabulous little horse.’

The Showcase Meeting was a first chance to discuss with jumping aficionados the slate of changes being made to the future Festival programme, including the Turner Novices Chase losing its Grade One status and becoming a handicap as will the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase.