Leopardstown Chase - Leopardstown, January 11th: The Key Trends

- The ground has been no faster than yielding-soft in the past 10 years.
- Arthur Moore is a trainer to note. He has saddled 2 winners and 4 placed horse in the past decade including the second and third last year.
- Unlike many of the top staying handicaps, weight seems not to matter and there is no reason why lightly-weighted contenders should be given preference. The top-weight has won the last 2 renewals while winners in the preceding 8 years carried 12-0, 11-11 and 11-1 to victory.
- 7 of the last 9 winners have been rated between 134 and 144.
- 9yos are the dominant age-group with 6 winners and 5 runners-up since 1999. Horses in double figures can and do win this as What A Native (10yo) and Buck Rogers (11yo) have shown but both were very lightly raced for their age having had just 9 and 10 chase starts respectively and as a rule I’d be against very exposed horses.
- The market was a fine guide between 1999 and 2006 with every winner returned at 7/1 or shorter but its efficiency hasn’t been great lately with 14/1 shots winning the last 2 runnings.
- Concentrate on in-form horses; 8 of the last 9 winners had finished in the first four on their last completed start.
- Of the big winter handicaps, the Troytown has been a much better guide than the Paddy Power. Half of the winners in the last decade ran in the Navan race, finishing:11423, while only two had run in the December 27th event, one being brought down and the other finishing eleventh. No surprise there as the Leopardstown Chase and Troytown share much in common being classy affairs contested by much smaller fields (only one field of more than 15 since 1999) than the Paddy Power which is more of a lottery. And yes, I’ve never backed the winner of it!
- 9 of the last 10 winners ran in the previous 6 weeks.
- Focus on unexposed horses. Of the last 10 winners, only Cloudy Bays (a Charles Byrnes special) had more than 9 starts in handicap chases.
- In the same vein, second- and third-season chasers dominate. The aforementioned What A Native and Buck Rogers may have had their chase runs spread out due to injuries but they were second- and third-season chasers in all but name like the all the other recent winners.
- Proven stamina isn’t a pre-requisite for success as 3 of the recent winners had yet to win over 3 miles. All had previously won over at least 2m5f though.