YOU have to start your Badger Beers Handicap Chase analysis with Paul Nicholls. Since he started winning the race in 1999 with Flaked Oats, he has won 10 of the next 24 renewals, that’s 11 of the last 25, and that’s 44%.

He hasn’t won the race since 2022 but, last year, his sole representative Mofasa was never travelling and was pulled up after the cross fence, and was well beaten in each of his two subsequent races, while, in 2023, his two runners finished second and third behind the winner Blackjack Magic. The third horse that day was the 11-year-old Frodon, who won the race the previous year and who would run just one more time, in the 2023 King George, while the second horse was Threeunderthrufive, who is back for more this year.