The November Meeting is where many of the season’s best young chasers first jump Cheltenham’s fences in public. Its two-mile Grade 2 novice chase, the Arkle Trophy Trial, gives the earliest look at the horse racing bet picture for March. The race was a Sunday fixture for years and has been run on the Saturday in each of the last two seasons. These five winners went on to land a race at the Festival.
Best Mate
Henrietta Knight’s Best Mate won his first chase at Exeter in October 2000, then took the November Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham under Jim Culloty. He was favourite for the 2001 Arkle, but the Festival was cancelled that year because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
He made up for it in the Gold Cup. Best Mate won it in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and became the first horse since Arkle, in 1964-66, to win the race three times. His second win had already made him the first horse to win it more than once since L’Escargot in 1970 and 1971.
Azertyuiop
Paul Nicholls’s Azertyuiop won the 2002 running under Ruby Walsh. He arrived at the 2003 Festival having won all three of his novice chases by at least 16 lengths, then won the Arkle by 11 lengths.
The following year he stepped up to the Queen Mother Champion Chase and won it by nine lengths from Flagship Uberalles, the 2002 winner. Walsh rode him in every chase bar one.
Dodging Bullets
Dodging Bullets won the race on 17 November 2013 by five lengths from Raya Star, with County Hurdle winner Ted Veale another three and a quarter lengths back. He also won the Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase that season.
His Festival win came 16 months later. On 11 March 2015 he beat Somersby by a length and a quarter in the Champion Chase, with Special Tiara a length and three quarters further back. That completed a Grade 1 hat-trick after the Tingle Creek and the Clarence House Chase.
Le Prezien
Le Prezien won the 2016 running on 13 November for Nicholls and Barry Geraghty, beating Hammersly Lake and Three Stars.
His Festival success came in a handicap. He was a beaten favourite in the 2017 Grand Annual, then won it on 16 March 2018 by four and a half lengths, in the last race of that year’s Festival. Owner JP McManus had bought him two years earlier from the Million In Mind racing club for £290,000.
Put The Kettle On
Henry de Bromhead’s mare was the outsider of four when she travelled from Ireland for the race on 17 November 2019. She led from the start under Aidan Coleman and beat Al Dancer by two and a half lengths.
She beat eight rivals in the 2020 Arkle and held off Fakir d’Oudairies on the run-in to win by a length and a half. A year later she won the Champion Chase by half a length from Nube Negra.
What the Trial Tells You About the Arkle
Since 1990, only Azertyuiop and Put The Kettle On have won the trial and the Arkle in the same season. None of the six winners since Put The Kettle On has followed up in the Arkle.
The trial is a better guide to class than to one race. Best Mate and Dodging Bullets both won at the Festival 16 months after their trial wins, so the winner’s long-term record matters as much as March.
