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Foaled on April 26, 1990, See More Business was one of the outstanding steeplechasers of his generation and was credited by now 14-time champion trainer Paul Nicholls as the ‘foundation’ of his training career. In his heyday, the son of Seymour Hicks was awarded a Timeform Annual Rating of 182, which, a decade after his death on July 24, 2014, places him co-thirteenth on the list of highest-rated steeplechasers since the early sixties, alongside the likes of triple Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Best Mate.

Owned by Nicholls’ former landlord, Paul Barber, originally in parthership with John Keighley and later with Sir Robert Ogden, See More Business won 18 of his 36 starts under Rules – 3-3 over hurdles and 15-33 over fences – and amassed just over £700,000 in total prize money. The biggest victory of his career came on March 18, 1999, when, wearing first-time blinkers, he was all out to beat 66/1 by a length in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

By that stage of his career, he had already won the King George VI Chase once, in 1997, and would so again on Boxing Day 1999, with an impressive, 17-length victory over Go Ballistic, again. See Your Business continued racing well into his dotage, winning for the final time at Wincanton on February 15, 2003, as a 13-year-old. He ran his last race in the John Hughes Rehearsal Chase at Chepstow the following December, finishing a distant fourth, and was retired early the following year, at the age of 14.

For the uninitiated, Honeysuckle is, at the time of writing, a ten-year-old mare, formerly trained by Henry De Bromhead in Knockeen, County Waterford, but retired to stud following her Cheltenham Festival farewell, when winning the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle, in March 2023. That was, in fact, her second victory in the race in which she opened her Cheltenham Festival account four years earlier, with a hard-fought half-length victory over the odds-on favourite, Benie Des Dieux, trained by Willie Mullins.

By that stage of her career, Honeysuckle was already a three-time Grade 1 winner, having won the first of her three Irish Champion Hurdles at Leopardstown the previous month. She would win the same race again in 2021, en route to an impressive six-and-a-half-length win over Sharjah, also trained by Willie Mullins, in the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. In so doing, she made her regular partner, Rachael Blackmore, the first female jockey to win the two-mile hurdling championship.

Honeysuckle followed the same, familiar route in 2022, again with the Irish Champion Hurdle, the Champion Hurdle and the Punchestown Hurdle. On her return to action, she tasted the first two defeats of her career, at the hands of Teahupoo and State Man, but returned to winning ways in the aforementioned David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle for her fourth, and final, Festival success. All told, the daughter of Sulamani won 17 of her 19 starts, never finished outside the first three and amassed £1.43 million in total prize money.

The Ladbrokes Champion Chase, formerly the James Nicholson Wine Merchant Champion Chase, is, as the name suggests, a Grade 1 steeplechase run over three miles at Down Royal Racecourse, near Lisburn, Northern Ireland in late October or early November. The race is a latter-day addition to the Irish National Hunt calendar, having been inaugurated, over a furlong further, in 1999, before being shortened to the current distance a year later.

After the first three, top-class renewals, won by Florida Pearl, Looks Like Trouble and Foxchapel King, the James Nicholson Wine Merchant Championship Chase, as was, was awarded Grade 1 status. Indeed, the Ladbrokes Champion Chase, as the race has been known since the 2019 renewal, now has the distinction of being the first Grade 1 event of the Irish National Hunt season.

Despite its relatively short history, the :Ladbrokes Champion Chase is firmly established as an early-season target for top-class staying chasers trained on both sides of the Irish Sea. Of 24 renewals, so far, six have gone the way of British-trained horses, all bar one of which were trained by Paul Nicholls. The 14-time British Champion National Hunt Trainer was responsible for Taranis (2007), Kauto Star (2008, 2010), Kauto Stone (2012) and, most recently, Frodon (2021). The first four of that quintet were ridden by Ruby Walsh and Frodon by Bryony Frost. Alongside Co. Meath-based Gordon Elliott, Nicholls is jointly the most successful trainer in the history of the race.