2011 Charlie Hall Chase Betting Preview

The Graded contests in the 2011/12 National Hunt season are really starting to pile up as each weekend goes by and with the Breeders Cup about to run in two weeks – signifying the de facto finale of the global flat racing calendar – attention turns to action over fences as the steeplechase season kicks off in earnest in the UK and Ireland.

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With the Old Roan Chase now behind us and the JNwine.com Champion Chase drawing closer by the day, bookmakers have opened up an ante post market on the Bet365 Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby this Saturday.

A number of big names are set to line up in this one and several will be using the Grade 2 contest as their seasonal debut. A number of them have their eyes on the big fixtures around Christmastime and then, obviously, onwards into the festival season.

Carruthers, last seen in the Grade 1 Cheltenham Gold Cup, is going to be starting off his campaign with this assignment. While he certainly seems to be showing up in the big races time after time, he hasn't actually won anything since December of 2009 and that was at ungraded level. A second-place finish to What A Friend in the 2010 Totesport Bowl at Aintree is his biggest recent success.

Striking a similar note is Chief Dan George, who was last seen running in the National. He scored a Grade 3 at Cheltenham in 2010 but has not been kind to the punters since. He'll be out for more of a workout than anything else.

Diamond Harry spent much of last year on the sidelines but he's set to return in this one an dit will be interesting to see if he remains the same type of runner. He had been on an excellent streak and had been rated as high as 165 back in 2009.

Midnight Chase, fifth in the Gold Cup, knows a thing or two about winning streaks and he's looking to get another one started here. It appears as though he'll be taking a fair amount of volume though going concerns continue to float above him. He is certainly in the mix but will want the ground to be to his liking on the day.

Weird Al has scored in a Grade 2 at Wetherby in the past and he's going to be a key contender here but was relatively unproductive last year so that may put some punters off of him. Look out for the eight-year-old son of Accordion if he gets some positive feedback from connections in the build-up to the race.