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For readers unfamiliar with the name, Fact To File is an eight-year-old gelding, owned by John McManus and trained by Willie Mullins, who was briefly promoted to favouritism for the 2025 Cheltenham Gold Cup after beating the reigning champion Galopin Des Champs, also trained by Mullins, into third place in the John Durkan Memorial Punchestown Chase on November 24, 2024. However, when the pair met again in the Savills Chase at Leopardstown on December 28, 2024, Galopin Des Champs not only reversed the Punchestown form to the tune of ten and a quarter lengths, but did so emphatically, making all the running and drawing clear on the run-in to win going away.

Nevertheless, despite that reverse, at the time of writing Fact To File remains a top-priced 4.1 second favourite for the 2025 Cheltenham Gold Cup. The son of Poliglote, who has still had only six starts over regulation fences, was a ready, three-and-three-quarter-length winner of the Broadway Novices’ Chase, over three miles and half a furlong, at the 2024 Cheltenham Festival and is currently outright 4/1 favourite for the 2025 Ryanair Chase, back over the intermediate distance o two miles and four and a half furlongs.

Fact To File is currently rated 170+ by Timeform, 9lb inferior to Galopin Des Champs, with the inference that he may be better yet. For all that Willie Mullins has said that “Galopin Des Champs wouldn’t be seen at his best” over the two-and-a-half-mile trip in the John Durkan, McManus certainly has an embarrassment of riches in the staying chasing division, with the likes of Fact To File, Spillane’s Tower and Inothwayurthnkin at his disposal. Tony Mullins, brother of Willie, has already said of Fact To File, “…J.P. [McManus] has never owned one like this and he’s owned a lot of good horses”, so it will be fascinating to see what the future holds for the young pretender.

Two decades after suffering a fatal heart attack, as a ten-year-old, in the Haldon Gold Cup Chase at Exeter on November 1, 2005, Best Mate remains the co-thirteenth highest-rated steeplechaser in the history of Timeform. Of course, he is best remembered for winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years running, in 2002, 2003 and 2004, making him one of just three horses since World War II – the others being Cottage Rake and Arkle – to do so.

Owned by the late Jim Lewis, trained by Henrietta Knight at West Lockinge Farm, near Wantage, Oxfordshire and ridden, for all bar four of his races under Rules, by Jim Culloty, Best Mate won 14 of his 22 starts, including 11 of his 16 steeplechases, and amassed over £1 million in prize money. He was good enough to finish a never-nearer second, beaten just threequarters of a length, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 2000 and, having made a successful transition to fences, was ante-post favourite for the Arkle Challenge Trophy before an outbreak of foot and mouth disease caused the Festival to be rescheduled, and then abandoned altogether in 2001.

In 2002, Best Mate beat 17 opponents, including defending champion Looks Like Trouble, to win his first Cheltenham Gold Cup and returned to Prestbury Park the following year to become the first horse since L’Escargot, in 1971, to win the ‘Blue Riband’ event twice. In 2004, he duly completed the hat-trick, becoming the first horse since Arkle, in 1966, to do so, but was denied the chance of completing a four-timer when suffering a training injury just over a week before the 2005 renewal. Reflecting on his tragic death on his reappearance the following November, Jim Lewis said, “It’s been a privilege to own such a great horse. There have been very few as good…I will never forget him and what he did.”