British dominance in festival handicap chases raises questions over Irish marks

The handicapping of Irish-trained runners at the Cheltenham Festival has come increasingly under the microscope in recent years and calculating the average differential between Irish and British ratings at each festival is often a revealing, if time-consuming, exercise.

One of the more peculiar themes to emerge from this year's handicap weights was theharsher overall treatment of Irish-trained handicap chasers.

For context, handicap chase entries on the visiting team had been given, on average, 1.3lb higher marks than their home ratings in 2018, 2.4lb higher in 2019, 2.1lb in 2020 and 2.4lb last year.