Cheltenham, here we come
There are few things more British than the Cheltenham Festival. There are also few things more Irish, even though the Festival is held on British soil. We’ll come to that later.
The 2025 Festival runs from Tuesday, March 11 to Friday, March 14. For those unfamiliar with it, allow us to explain…
Basically, it is the biggest and best horse racing meeting in the UK’s National Hunt calendar – which is racing over jumps and fences as opposed to over a flat track.
the highlight of every National Hunt season
In terms of prestige and prize money, it is second only to the Grand National – arguably the most famous horseracing steeplechase in the world – but for many, the four-day Cheltenham Festival is the highlight of every National Hunt season in the UK.
It takes place annually in March at Cheltenham Racecourse, which is on the southern tip of the English/Welsh border in the county of Gloucestershire. The date of the meeting often coincides with St. Patrick’s Day and so is very popular with Irish visitors.
Irish winners of the Prestbury Cup?
That the Festival is before St. Patrick’s Day will not, however, deter the Irish invaders, who will have many Irish horses, trainers, and jockeys to cheer on over the course of its four days. Its proximity to Ireland also makes it easy to reach from the Emerald Isle.
The meeting also benefits from a beautiful location – in the heart of the Cotswolds – and is held on a course that has hosted racing since 1829.
Over the course of the Festival’s four days, there are 28 races, half of which are Grade 1 events (the top division of horse racing), including the famous Cheltenham Gold Cup, the Champion Hurdle, the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Stayers’ Hurdle.
Around 70,000 racegoers will be in attendance at the Festival each day, which, to continue the Anglo-Irish theme, also includes an official on-track rivalry – the Prestbury Cup.
This trophy, first introduced to the meeting in 2014, sees the horses owned and trained in the Republic of Ireland compete against those from the UK.
Ireland leads the way
In 2024, it was won by the Irish, with 18 wins compared to nine for the UK, and that’s pretty much been the tale of the tape since its inception. The 2024 win made it four in a row for the Irish, and while 2019 was a draw, the UK hasn’t won it since 2015.
Overall, the Irish have won eight times and the UK just twice, with those from the Emerald Isle totaling 184 winners compared to 120 from those this side of the Irish Sea.
unlikely stories, heart-warning moments
But Cheltenham is not just about the winners. For horse racing lovers, it’s a mystical place that is guaranteed to throw up unlikely stories, heart-warming moments, and sometimes, events that are, maybe, best forgotten.
Here are just a few…
The fairytale of 1990
If you’re a lover of a long shot, then this one is definitely for you. It could be argued that it is one of the greatest underdog stories in British horse racing.
It was in the 1990 Cheltenham Gold Cup – the meeting’s blue-ribbon race – that a completely unfancied and unknown horse named Norton’s Coin won the race after starting at a massive +10,000.
This barely believable feat was made all the more unbelievable by the fact the horse was trained by Welsh dairy farmer Sirrell Griffiths, who did so as just a hobby. He had just two other horses in his stable.
On the morning of the race, Griffiths was, as always, milking his herd of cows, but he ended it with a handshake from the Queen Mother as she handed over the famous trophy and after Norton’s Coin had left the legendary Desert Orchid in his wake, which finished third.
It wasn’t, however, the start of an illustrious career for Norton’s Coin. After his Cheltenham triumph, he went on to win just one of his next 18 races before he was retired.
The Festival that never was
The 2001 Festival is one remembered for all the wrong reasons – namely that it didn’t happen. It was the year that foot-and-mouth disease spread like wildfire across the UK.
It sadly resulted in more than six million cows and sheep being killed in response to the outbreak. All public rights of way in the UK were closed, and any animal within three kilometers of a live case had to be culled.
The impact on horse racing was massive – many meetings were canceled – but despite Cheltenham’s original meeting being postponed, organizers were confident that a new date in April 2001 would enable it to go ahead.
Everything looked set for the meeting, and all the usual preparations from organizers, trainers, horses, hospitality providers, and spectators were almost complete when it was announced that a new case had been confirmed in a village just five miles from the Prestbury Park course.
The British Horseracing Board was, unfortunately, forced to cancel the whole event and with no other dates available, Cheltenham 2001 became the one that got away.
Frustratingly for racegoers, the 2001 Grand National was unaffected and went ahead as normal less than three days later.
Amateur lives the dream
People who play sports at an amateur level dream of performing on the biggest stage. Local soccer players in the UK dream of scoring a goal at Wembley. Amateur golfers in the US dream of hitting a winning putt at Augusta.
For most, that dream remains a dream. But at Cheltenham 2011, that dream became a reality for amateur jockey Sam Waley-Cohen.
he rode against and beat some of jump racing’s royalty
Racing was only a relatively small part of Waley-Cohen’s life. He was also a very successful entrepreneur who, among other things, set up a huge chain of dental practices. But it was in horse racing that he made his name when, on his dream day, he rode against and beat some of jump racing’s royalty, like AP McCoy, Ruby Walsh, and Barry Geraghty.
In the 2011 Gold Cup, Waley-Cohen rode a fancied horse named Long Run to victory on the big day and said afterward of how he struggled to comprehend that he was passing some of the sport’s greats, like Kauto Star and Denman, on his way to the finish line.
He became the first amateur in three decades to ride to victory in the sport’s biggest race.
Switching codes … and saddles
While Waley-Cohen was, in sporting terms, a nobody when he won the Gold Cup, Victoria Pendleton was most definitely a somebody when she rode at the Festival in 2016. But she wasn’t when it came to horse riding.
Instead, Pendleton made her name in a different type of saddle – that of a racing bike. And very successful she was, too, winning two Olympic Gold medals in the colors of Great Britain in the 2008 and 2012 Games.
But even when she had retired from pro cycling, the urge to get in the saddle and go fast lingered. So much so that in 2016, she decided to go all-in on swapping the velodrome for the racecourse.
While many dismissed it as little more than a publicity stunt, it was anything but, and the same determination that saw Pendleton win those two golds and nine world titles shone through in her quest to ride at the Cheltenham Festival.
She did it the hard way, earning her stripes through grit and hard work rather than being gifted a fast track, and she was rewarded
While she may not have won the 2016 St James’s Palace Foxhunters Chase, she gave her mount Pacha Du Polder a good, solid ride, and their hard-earned fifth-place finish forced the cynics to eat some humble pie.
Afterward, Pendleton described it as “probably the greatest achievement of my life” – quite a statement from someone who had enjoyed so much cycling success.
Dickinson’s glorious five-star day
For most racehorse trainers, the dream is to have a runner in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Only the elite get to train a contender or live the ultimate dream of training a winner.
the greatest training feat in the long history of the Cheltenham Gold Cup
So imagine how Michael Dickinson felt after the 1983 race when, that day, the horses finishing first, second, third, fourth, and fifth were all trained by him! His achievement is unlikely to ever be matched and goes down as the greatest training feat in the long history of the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
In the 1980s, all the big races in Britain were called home by the late, great commentator, Sir Peter O’Sullevan, but even he was lost for words that day as Bregawn, Captain John, Wayward Lad, Silver Buck, and Ashley House all came home first.
Power failure saves the bookies
There are not many days in British racing that cost the bookmakers over $150m, but one so nearly came about in 2015. Nearly … but didn’t.
As the odds-on favorite Annie Power approached the final fence in the Mares’ Hurdle with top jockey Ruby Walsh on board, the British bookmaking industry and the whole of Cheltenham held its collective breath.
Now, it’s not often that a horse’s mistake is cheered, but it’s hard to believe there weren’t a few smiles and relieved faces as Annie Power and Walsh faltered at that final hurdle and fell.
Both were thankfully fine, but trainer Willie Mullins was, with that fall, denied the chance to see four of his horses win Grade 1 races that afternoon.
A Mullins four-way accumulator would have been the bookie-buster to end all bookie-busters. The total payout would have been of epic, record-breaking proportions, but Annie’s trip saved them
Her mistake gave the bookies a reprieve from something some may never have recovered from, but will also have cost some punters the payday of their lives!
And finally…
I wrote earlier about the Festival that never was. Well, in 2020, there was the Festival that was but probably shouldn’t have been.
Just ten days before the UK was locked down in order to try and stop the spread of coronavirus, over 150,000 people attended the Festival’s four days at a time when most other sporting events and large gatherings were being postponed.
In the week following, a former government chief scientific adviser said that it could have helped to “accelerate the spread” of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sir David King, the UK government’s chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, went a step further, saying “it was the best possible way to accelerate the spread of the virus”.
While the UK government of the day claimed it had followed all the advice available to them at the time, they faced a huge backlash for permitting the event to go ahead.
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So, while the Festival is unquestionably a gathering of the crème de la crème and produces some of the best quality racing of the National Hunt season, it’s rarely without controversy.
Who or what will be at the center of it this year?