Captain Guinness picks up the pieces but winning figure is joint-lowest this century

In his pre-festival stable tour, when describing the Champion Chase prospects of Captain Guinness, Henry de Bromhead pointed out that his horse had run a "savage" race last year and felt he "could maybe pick up the pieces if anything goes wrong with the big guys". His analysis proved spot-on.

Rated 165 when a respectable ten-length second behind easy winner Energumene (179) last season, he didn't need to run to the level of a typical winner of the race to go one better on Wednesday. With Jonbon, who had beaten him at Sandown last April, failing to make the line-up and his Dublin Chase conqueror El Fabiolo (179) pulling up early on, he probably didn't need to step up much on last year's figure to land the prize this time around. 

A winning RPR of 167 rates a small personal best but falls around 7lb below the ten-year average winning mark for the race and is the joint-lowest winning figure this century.