Data reveals the best Cheltenham profiles - and it's bad news for Sir Gerhard

For the road to Cheltenham to sustain itself, it needs a few signposts. This is why consensus tends to form around certain races acting as trials for certain others in March. But a lot of this is narrative-focused, and those looking for winners could do with fewer stories and more facts.

Traditional trends study tends to focus on the art of the possible and therefore simplifies the brief. With a bit of data know-how, the net can be cast wider. Instead of cherry-picking races to study, we have looked at more than 300 races in Britain and Ireland and cross-referenced them all to one another. As might have been hoped, this has revealed some surprising truths about where Cheltenham Festival winners can be found.

The statistics discussed below apply to the most recent runnings of the 'trial' races, with exceptions made for other races at the festival.