The Ryanair Steeple Chase

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The Ryanair Steeple Chase is a National Hunt race held on Cheltenham Festival’s third day. It’s the featured race of the day and highly anticipated by punters around the world. This Grade 1 steeplechase is run on Cheltenham’s New Course for a generous £350,000 prize purse.

Officially known as the Festival Trophy, the race was first sponsored by the Daily Telegraph. The first was held in 2005 and, back then, it was a Grade 2 event, though it was upgraded to Grade 1 in 2008. Since then, Ryanair has picked up sponsorship duties for the chase.

Ryanair Steeple Chase: Tips and Predictions

Note: the predictions below refer to the 2021 running of this race – preview will be updated closer to the beginning of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival.

Perhaps the most wide open Grade 1 race we will see this week. Min won last year, taking advantage of poor jumping from Saint Calvados late on. The former is a proven top-level performer and joins stablemates Allaho and Melon (second in all four Cheltenham Festival starts) in a mob-handed Willie Mullins quest for four Ryanair Chase wins in six years.

Samcro is 2-2 at this meeting and not overlooked easily but IMPERIAL AURA was a winner here last March as a novice (beating Tuesday’s National Hunt Chase winner Galvin into second) and remains progressive. He was a Grade2 Ascot winner in November and his Kempton unseat in January is easily forgivable. This has long been his target and he goes especially well fresh.

Enda McElhinney‘s Selection: Imperial Aura

2021 Winner: Allaho (Rachael Blackmore) 3/1 Fav

Ryanair Steeple Chase: Betting Odds

Ryanair Steeple Chase: Recent Winners