YOU can tell a lot by what name you associate with a race. There will be people still referring to today’s feature event at Cheltenham as the Mackeson. Others may refer to it as the Murphy’s Gold Cup or even the Thomas Pink.

I’ve always known it as the Paddy Power. That’s what it was when I first got into racing and after a brief sabbatical, that’s what it is again now. If you’re a Gen Z racing fan, you probably know it as the BetVictor.

The sponsor titles might have changed over the years but the race has maintained its guise as an attractive challenge of trying to find out which lightly-raced young chaser has the most scope to emerge best over this unique course and distance.

Potential, potential, potential. Most Paddy Power winners are raised by at least 7lbs for their success in this race. It’s more than likely that the younger, lightly-raced horses will have this sort of scope for improvement.

The stats back it up. Of the previous 30 renewals, 17 winners were aged five, six or seven while 13 of the previous 19 winners were either novice or second-season chasers.

French Dynamite is all potential. He has just five starts over fences and won three of them. The form of his Punchestown third last season cannot be working out any better. And his trainer has protected his mark with a sharpener over hurdles to get him ready for today.

You can see why he’s favourite. But there are other trends to consider. Since Michael O’Brien sent out Bright Highway to win this race in 1980, remarkably there has been only one Irish winner since, Edward O’Grady’s Tranquil Sea in 2009.

Course

Course form is also big. It always is at Cheltenham, but in particular over this intermediate distance, on the old course and the new, seems to be a speciality. Eight of the last 10 winners had winning form at Cheltenham prior to winning here.

French Dynamite will have to defy those statistics but there will be plenty of confidence in him to do so and he might just be so well handicapped he can deal with the idiosyncrasies of Prestbury Park. His chase mark in Britain is just 1lb higher than it is in Ireland, a rare occurrence and one exasperated when you compare it to Thousand Tears in the Greatwood Hurdle tomorrow, whose hurdles mark is 11lbs higher.

It also goes without saying that Mouse Morris can ready one for Cheltenham. Some of his finest days have come in the Cotswolds and the likelihood that he has had this target in mind for French Dynamite for quite some time is a big positive.

It won’t be easy. Stolen Silver leads a cohort of runners in the race who have both course form and a lightly-raced profile. He is trained by Sam Thomas and part owned by Dai Walters, who were both lucky to survive a helicopter crash in north Wales last week.

Walters is still recovering from the injuries he sustained in the crash but Thomas came out largely unscathed. On the track, his form has been brilliant, with marquee handicap chase wins through Our Power and Al Dancer, both owned by Walters, over the last two weekends.

THE prospect of Energumene and Shishkin settling their score this season is thrilling and here is hoping they clash again.

However, could a young pretender join the fray and adopt a Well Chief role in the rivalry with Azertyuiop and Moscow Flyer?

Perhaps that ascent will begin this weekend as Grade 1-winning novices from last year Gentleman De Mee, Edwardstone and Ferny Hollow have their first runs in open company.

First up is the Gentleman. No sooner had Edwardstone finally earned outright top billing in the two-mile novice chase division that he had it taken away from him by the J.P. McManus-owned, Willie Mullins-trained six-year-old who put up an excellent jumping performance against the Arkle winner at Aintree.

He’s odds-on to start off with a win in the Poplar Square Chase (2.05) at Naas today, but he must concede weight to a pair of useful rivals.

“We’re hoping he’s going to be a Champion Chase horse and in all those Grade 1 two-mile chases so it would be great to start off with some good match practice before taking on the open company horses,” Patrick Mullins said earlier this week.

You’d imagine a similar sentiment applies to the brilliant but fragile Ferny Hollow who has been given a harder opening task in the Fortria Chase (2.30) at Navan tomorrow.

The Cheveley Park-owned seven-year-old has only been able to fleetingly showcase his talent in the last two seasons before injuries have halted his progress. He is a seriously talented horse on his day.

Tomorrow Edwardstone will return to the scene of his finest hour when he takes on the deadly-when-fresh Nube Negra in the Grade 2 Shloer Chase (1.45) at Cheltenham tomorrow. A win over Dan Skelton’s talented chaser could set up a big season the eight-year-old.