Andrew Newton takes a lot of the recent trends for the popular Cheltenham precursor at Sandown

With the 2023 Cheltenham Festival now firmly in our sights, there’s a lot to get excited about this month, but with plenty of coverage from the best four days on National Hunt action in this edition, I like to give some of the other races some coverage.
With that in mind, this month’s Betfair Imperial Cup, from Sandown Park (March 11), gets put in the shadows by Cheltenham, as it’s always run on the Saturday before the Festival – but with the sponsors often attaching a bonus to the race, thi...