YOU talk about 12-year-olds and RSA Chase winners, and it’s a fairly short conversation. No 12-year-old has ever won the RSA Chase. No 11-year-old has ever won it. No 10-year-old has ever won it, and the last nine-year-old to win it was Minnehoma in 1992. Whisper went close as a nine-year-old in 2017, but that would have gone down as a defeat for Might Bite more than a victory for Whisper.

But dig a little deeper. In the last 10 years, no 12-year-old has run in the RSA Chase. That shouldn’t be surprising, it’s a novice race, and would be an unusual set of circumstances that would conspire to result in a horse who has the potential to line up in a Grade 1 chase to still be a novice as an 11-rising-12-year-old. Actually, there hasn’t been a runner in the RSA Chase in the last 10 years who has been older than nine.