Champion Bumper Tips Cheltenham Champagne Fever Moscow Mannon to go close
They call it the race at the Festival without the obstacles.
The Champion Bumper is essentially a flat race run under National Hunt racing rules, over a distance two miles and is a race that is traditionally dominated by Ireland.
The current score reads 14-5 in favour of the Emerald Isle over their British counterparts, including a streak of 11 consecutive wins.
Willie Mullins has been the main reason behind the dominance of the Irish – saddling six winners. He also rode his first winner of the race, the 1996 scorer Wither Or Which, while it has been a real family affair throughout his tight grip on the race as son Patrick was in the saddle when Cousin Vinny won for the stable in 2008. Interestingly however, if you had backed all Mullins runners in the ten years he has been running them then you would be losing money on a level stakes basis.
Champion Bumper Tips
Champagne Fever looks to have the edge over Moscow Mannon at this year’s Champion Bumper Tips at Cheltenham but Gevrey Chambertin should go close
Perhaps the reason for the Irish flood of winners has been the lack of faith the big-hitting British stables have in the race. Both Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson have never tasted victory in the race but only have saddled 19 runners between them since the inception of the event, which highlights that the British stables have failed to really embrace the nature of the race.
The four horses to have kept the trophy in the UK are Dato Star (1995) Monsignor (1999) Liberman (2003), the richly impressive Cue Card (2010) and Cheltenian (2011).
That Phillip Hobbs-trained winner thwarted a potential clean sweep by the Irish on last year’s Ladies Day after they had won the previous six races on the card. The ironies of all ironies that the only race they failed to bag on the day was the one they have been so successful in.
When there’s an Irish Cheltenham Bumper winner you can guarantee Willie Mullins probably had something to do with it.
The legendary Irish handler has won the race six times and the markets have made Champagne Fever their ante-post favourite to give Mullins his seventh success in the event.
He was promoted to the head of the betting following an easy victory at Fairyhouse in January. Plenty was expected of the horse on his debut at Leopardstown on his previous start but he failed to justify strong market support and was beaten by Thomas Edison. This means he will go to Prestbury Park not unbeaten and when you consider that four of the last five winners entered the race unbeaten, that loss over Christmas could prove costly to his chances.
The statistics show that 14 of the 19 winners could be found outside the first six in the betting, so sticking towards the forefront of the markets probably is the best way to finding the winner.
Second in the betting behind the Mullins hot-pot is Brian Hamilton’s Moscow Mannon, who would provide Hamilton with a first ever Festival winner. In fact, his stable is so small he’s only ever saddled one runner at Cheltenham – Chief Oscar in the 2009 Foxhunter Chase. The reason the horse is prominent in the markets is because he has remained unbeten in three starts and has won every race in the style of a very good horse. He completed the hat-trick of wins with a fine performance at Gowran Park at the end of January. A victory for the stable of his size at jump racing’s premier event would be a monumental achievement.
Other interesting runners include four-year-old Fickle Fortune trained by Noel Meade and the so-called Mullins second string Pique Sous.
