It's the Grade 1 nobody wants to win - but why on earth don't trainers want to emulate Kauto Star and Florida Pearl?

The inaugural Ladbrokes Champion Chase at Down Royal – the James Nicholson Wine Merchant Champion Chase as it was known back then – was a heavyweight showdown between Florida Pearl and Dorans Pride in 1999. 

A year later Florida Pearl, who ran in the race four years in a row between 1999 and 2002, was only fourth under an emerging Ruby Walsh, as Gold Cup hero Looks Like Trouble made every yard of the running on his reappearance and beat Dorans Pride by 15 lengths. The mighty Kauto Star won it twice, and there was the year Beef Or Salmon proved yet again that he was a home bird and put his Cheltenham woes to one side to repel the Gold Cup winner War Of Attrition by a neck after a ding-dong duel up the straight. 

Don Cossack also won the Down Royal showpiece at the start of his Gold Cup-winning season, so here we have a race with a short but pretty impressive history that nobody wants to win anymore. Well, not exactly nobody. Gordon Elliott definitely does, and Henry de Bromhead maybe, but the rest couldn't care less about it. The first Grade 1 of the domestic jumps season is an unloved child in the infancy of the season that is in dire need of some TLC.