Galopin Des Champs, the Cheltenham Gold Cup winner in 2022 and 2023, is a clear favourite to become the first since Best Mate in 2004 to complete a hat-trick in steeplechasing’s championship event after a deeply impressive return to winning form in the Savills Chase at Leopardstown.

Willie Mullins’s eight-year-old went into the race as the 5-2 joint-favourite for the Gold Cup alongside his stable companion, Fact To File, who was also his main market rival for Saturday’s Grade One.

Having tracked the front-running Galopin Des Champs to the second-last, however, Fact To File had no answer as Paul Townend went through the gears on the 5-6 favourite and a spectacular jump at the last put the seal on a seven-and-a-half length success.

Galopin Des Champs was immediately cut to around 4-5 to win a third successive Gold Cup in March while this win also helped to ease concerns that all might not be well in Mullins’s normally dominant operation.

The stable went into Saturday having had three winners from 47 starters during the busy post-Christmas programme, but ended the day with a Grade One double after Impaire Et Passe’s success in the feature event at Limerick.

At Newbury, Dan Skelton’s The New Lion cruised to success in the Grade One Challow Novice Hurdle, beating what appeared to be a strong field on paper under a hand ride by Harry Skelton. He was cut to around 4-1 (from 12-1) for the two-and-a-half mile Turners Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham in March and 10-1 (from 16-1) for the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle over an extra half mile.