The chaser can become the first horse since Best Mate to complete elusive three-timer in jumping’s premier test

Four of the six odds-on favourites over the first two days of this year’s festival were beaten, leaving many punters in a deep hole ahead of the last day of the meeting on Friday. It will be the most significant shock of all, however, if Galopin Des Champs (4.00) does not deliver for the backers in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and join the very select list of horses to have won the race three times.

Having beaten double-figure fields in the last two runnings, Willie Mullins’s chaser faces eight opponents this time around, and while the unexpected addition of Inothewayurthinkin, the favourite for next month’s Grand National, to the lineup adds some intrigue, he was seven lengths behind Galopin Des Champs at Leopardstown.