Sun shines on Chris Gordon - but six favourites and no winners means gloom for Paul Nicholls

Very few people in the real world are likely to be complaining about the lack of recent rain, but it certainly mucks things up for jump racing and exacerbates the small-field problems which have bedeviled this season. To illustrate what weird weather we've been having this winter, look no further than Saturday's card at Newbury which produced four (4!) course-record times on ground that was good to firm in places.

Most notable among those was Zanza carving eight seconds off the 2m7½f chase mark in the Denman Chase, beating the previous best set 11 years ago by none other than Long Run, who was the reigning Gold Cup hero at the time. Zanza's success provided Philip Hobbs with the 3,000th winner of his training career, so it was a historic moment for two reasons.

Perhaps that makes up for the likelihood that this is not going to be an especially significant piece of form. In a good year, the Denman Chase can be a key Cheltenham trial, but Zanza is a creature of Newbury and has now won there five times out of six while getting beat everywhere else since the end of 2018.