With horses not yet fully race-fit for the season and with 18 fences to be jumped, the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby over 3 miles is a genuine test of a steeplechaser.
The race has been on the go since 1969 and has always been thought of as a genuine Gold Cup trial. It has Grade 2 status, a £100,000 prize fund and this year will be run on Saturday October 30th.
The Charlie Hall, at least among its winners as you’ll see below, hasn’t had the best record in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in recent times but yet it is always contested by top quality horses and it would be folly to dismiss any placed finishers in this race in the context of the Blue Riband at Cheltenham in March.
1985 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Forgive ‘n Forget made his reappearance in this race in 1986, winning it, but Wetherby is itching for a Charlie Hall winner to go to score in the big one.
Cyrname had never won a race on a left-handed track like Wetherby before, nor had he previously proven that he possessed sufficient stamina to win an event like the Charlie Hall Chase over 3 miles. With those doubts hanging like a cloud over him, he was weak in the betting after being rerouted to West Yorkshire instead of heading over to Northern Ireland for the Ladbrokes Champion Chase at Down Royal. However, the officially highest rated steeplechaser in training silenced all his critics and laid down a marker which opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Sent off a relatively weak 3/1 when you consider that he had been offered at half that price by bookmakers in the ante post market when it opened, Cyrname jumped for fun around Wetherby in the hands of Harry Cobden. As the locally trained duo Sam Spinner (pulled up) and Defintly Red (last of eight finishers) both disappointed on the day, it fell instead to Paul Nicholls. The Ditcheat maestro landed this race for the fourth time. Cyrname was fluent clearing the fences when many of his rival weren’t.
His free going style of racing did leave those who had backed him wondering if there would be anything left for the finish. It was in truth a comfortable two-length victory over 2/1 favourite Vinndication from the in-form Kim Bailey Stable with Cyrname value for plenty more than the winning margin. Harriet Graham’s 12/1 chance Aye Right ran a fine race in third, beaten by a further five lengths. Cyrname had the field well strung out as Ballyoptic, a previous winner of the Charlie Hall Chase, failed to complete.
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Just 5 out of 19 favourites have won this race since the millennium, which is unusual for a high-grade conditions race. Even taking out the unusual 40/1 winner in the sequence, the average SP of Charlie Hall winners has been almost 5/1 so it seems you are better off looking for value and ignoring short-priced favourites.
You can couple this trend with the fact that 14 out of 19 winners have been aged 8 or over. Often younger horses who are improving come with a bit of a reputation and as such can be shorter in the market, but it appears that experience really counts in this race so stick with the solid form shown by the better 8-10-year-old runners.
While stats don’t come with any guarantees about finding the winner, you are more likely to make better betting decisions by following trends that not. Check out these key statistics for the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby and make sure to use Paddy Power Cheltenham specials and the likes by other brands for this and other races:
2018 was a year in which the Charlie Hall Chase broke up badly, only four runners eventually going to post. The favourite, perhaps unsurprisingly coming from a big yard, was Paul Nicholls’ Black Corton at 5/4 who was to be ridden by Bryony Frost.
Double Shuffle was next in at 5/2 and at 3/1, quite a decent price in a 4-runner contest, was local trainer Brian Ellison’s solid previous Gold Cup sixth Definitly Red ridden by Danny Cook.
Experience, as is usually the case in this race, was to count greatly too as Ellison’s star chase got to the front after the seventh fence and made the rest of the running, scoring in the end by two lengths from Black Corton who had no answers up the straight.
18 different horses over the last 20 years have won the Charlie Hall, only Ollie Magern and See More Business being double-winners, and here is a list of everything from the year 2010 on along with how they subsequently fared at the Cheltenham Festival:
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