The countdown to the 2013 Queen Mother Champion Chase continues and racing fans will be looking forward to seeing one of the most famous races on the sporting calendar.
The Champion Chase remains the leading two mile contest in racing all over the world and it remains the feature on the second day of the Cheltenham Festival.
First run in 1959, the showpiece was originally called the National Hunt Two-Mile Champion Chase, before it was handed the new title on the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday in 1980.
The Grade One’s roll of honour is befitting of a race of that stature and followers of National Hunt racing will remember some of the greatest chasers of all time powering up the Cheltenham hill to Champion Chase glory.
In 1985, the legendary Badsworth Boy completed a hat-trick of victories in the race and he remains the only horse to achieved three successes on the bounce. However, the have been plenty of superstars that have followed in his footsteps and the race has thrown up some incredibly impressive winners in recent years.
In 2008, Master Minded delivered one of the most emphatic Cheltenham Festival victories of all time with a demolish job under the hands of Ruby Walsh. It was a performance that saw him compared to the likes of Moscow Flyer, Aztertyuiop, Voy Por Ustedes and Remittance Man.
Even more recently, Henry de Bromhead’s Sizing Europe leapt to an awesome victory in the contest in 2011, but he was forced to play second to fiddle to Finian’s Rainbow in a controversial renewal of the race in 2012.
They will be back at Cheltenham in March, but they will have their work cut out if they’re going to stop Nicky Henderson’s explosive Sprinter Sacre and the ante post favourite for the race could well be one of the greatest chasers to have ever contested the two-mile thriller.