Galopin Des Champs’ Punchestown Gold Cup: Can the favorite keep its lead once again?

The best jumps horse in training has an official rating of 180 and has only been beaten twice over fences. Both defeats were at Punchestown – in a race last year and on his reappearance in the John Durkan Chase. There were excuses for those losses.

His surprise defeat in the previous year’s race was after a monumental effort to win his first Cheltenham Gold Cup, where several things went wrong, but he still managed to prevail. The John Durkan Chase is over just 2m3½f, and he was not at his best form during that race.