Foxhunter Steeple Chase
The Foxhunter Steeple Chase is the fifth race of the final day’s action at the Cheltenham Festival. It is a chase open to horses aged five and above. The race is run over 3 miles and 2 1/2 furlongs, and there is twenty-two fences to be jumped. The race is run over the same course and distance as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and has often been labeled the “Amateur Gold Cup” as the race is for amateur jockeys only. There is a qualification criteria for the race, whereby the entrants must have either finished in the first two on two occasions in hunter chases, won two open point-to-point races, or claimed one point-to-point victory and a top two finish in a hunter chase.
Hunting Out The Winner
Having knowledge of the point-to-point scene and hunter chases is naturally important to assessing the challengers in this race. The Gordon Elliott trained Backstage heads the market currently after sweeping up several point-to-point wins this season. 2010 Bay Run is also prominent in the market, however his advancing ages don’t bode particularly well with the trends. Chapoturgeon also looks strong in the market. He is a previous Cheltenham Festival winner having taken victory in the Jewson Novices Chase in 2009 when trained by Paul Nicholls. A recent sixteen length victory in a hunters chase at Newbury backs up his claims for the race. Last year’s winner Zemsky will also be a big threat if lining up having won convincingly in 2011.
Zemsky Storms To Victory
The 2011 Foxhunter Steeple Chase looked like going down to the wire when previous winner Baby Run looked to press on, with eventual winner Zemsky tracking him. Zemsky was perhaps traveling the best of the pair, but had the race handed to him when a mistake at the second-last saw Baby Run unseat rider William Twiston-Davies. The pair were plenty clear of the rest of the field, and it left Zemsky to coast him to a wide margin victory for amateur jockey Derek O’Connor and trainer Ian Ferguson. Zemsky was the second horse in the past four years to win at 33/1 in a race where there appears to be a big priced winner fairly frequently.
