Letheby and Christopher Chase

The Letheby and Christopher Chase has been run in several guises over the years and over a variety of distances, but since 1988 it has been a Grade 2 chase run over 3m11/2f on the New Course at Cheltenham at the end of January.

The race is open to horses aged five years or above and 19 fences are jumped.The race is regarded as a trial for the Cheltenham Gold Cup but only two previous winners - Master Oats (1995) and Looks Like Trouble (2000) - have gone on to win the Gold Cup in the same season.

The 2010 running was won by Taranis.

Cheltenham is regarded as the home of championship jump racing in Britain, mainly because of the four-day Cheltenham Festival in March, which is seen as the pinnacle of the jumps racing season. The main jumps track has two courses, known as the Old Course and New Course, and there is also a cross-country course.

The first organised Flat horse race meeting in Cheltenham took place in 1815, on Nottingham Hill, with the racecourse being moved to Prestbury Park, the current venue, in 1831. Jump racing started at the course in 1898 and nowadays Cheltenham hosts jump racing only, with its most famous race being the Cheltenham Gold Cup, which is the showpiece event of the Cheltenham Festival.

Cheltenham is part of Jockey Club Racecourses, which owns and operates 14 of Britain’s racecourses.

The race was first run in its current form in 1988 as the Charterhouse Mercantile Chase.

It became the Timeform Hall Of Fame Chase in 1993 and 1994 before Pillar Property stepped in to sponsor the race between 1995 and 2005.It was run as the HBLB Cotswold Chase in 2006 at Wincanton after Cheltenham was abandoned. The race’s registered title is the Cotswold Chase.

Paul Nicholls has won the race twice with See More Business in 1998 and 2001.Timmy Murphy rode the horse to his first success and Mick Fitzgerald was on board in 2001.

The only Irish-trained winner of the race was Rince Ri, trained by Ted Walsh and ridden by his son Ruby, in 2002. The sole French-trained winner was Jair Du Cochet, for trainer Guillaume Macaire and jockey Jacques Ricou, in 2004.

Keep an eye on the horse racing results to see who the next big winner of this years race is.

• The 11-year-olds See More Business (2001), Grey Abbey (2005) and See You Sometime (2006) are the oldest horses to win the race.
• Cyfor Malta (1999), aged six, was the youngest winner. He gave Tony McCoy his first win in the race. McCoy was also successful on Exotic Dancer (2007).
• Southern-based trainers have dominated the race over the years. Trainers in the north have struck only twice with One Man for Gordon Richards in 1997 and Grey Abbey for Howard Johnson in 2005.

If you enjoyed this hub have a look at my other horse racing hubs on:

• The Welsh National
• The King George VI Chase
• The Scottish Grand National
• The Racing Post Chase