Cheltenham News

Prestbury Park, Cheltenham is home to three separate racecourses but, with the exception of the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase, which is run on its own specialist course, all the races at the Cheltenham Festival are run on the Old Course or the New Course. Both courses are left-handed, undulating and galloping in character, with stiff fences and a taxing uphill finish, but there are some significant differences between them, which may not be immediately obvious to the casual observer.

 

Old Course

The Old Course is used, with the aforementioned exception, for all the races on Day One and Day Two of the Cheltenham Festival, which include the Champion Hurdle, Champion Bumper, and Queen Mother Champion Chase. The Old Course is an oval, approximately a mile and a half in circumference, with nine fences to a circuit, just one of which is in the home straight. It is, in fact, just half a furlong, or 110 yards, shorter than the New Course, but is, without doubt, the tighter and sharper of the two.

From its highest point, which is also the furthest from the stands, the Old Course takes a direct route to the winning post, typically favouring horses that race prominently, travel within themselves and have a turn of foot. Horses do, of course, tie up on the run-in, but the lead changes less often in the closing stages than might be expected. On the steeplechase course, the second-last fence, which was originally positioned before the final turn, was moved into the home straight in 2010 and has since been moved further past the bend, on more than one occasion, in recent years, but remains notoriously tricky.

 

New Course

The New Course – which, incidentally, was first used in its current guise in 1967, so is only relatively new – is used for all the races on Day Three and Day Four of the Cheltenham Festival, which include the Stayers’ Hurdle and Cheltenham Gold Cup. The New Course is slightly longer than the Old Course, with ten fences to a circuit, two of which are in the home straight.

The New Course runs alongside the Old Course for much of the way but, from its highest point, takes a parallel, but wider, route to the winning post. Consequently, the emphasis is more on stamina and hold-up horses, who may need to be manoeuvred into a position to improve, have a little more time to make ground from off the pace. On the hurdle course, which features just two flights in the final seven furlongs, the tendency is for horses to start racing too far from home, which, once again, plays into the hands of those ridden with more restraint. On the steeplechase course, the position of the fourth-last fence, at which Kauto Star came to grief in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2010, has been adjusted in recent years to reduce the number of fallers at the obstacle. Nowadays, like the second-last on the Old Course, it is a portable fence, which affords the Clerk of the Course the flexibility to move its position, if necessary.

 

The history of the Cheltenham Festival is littered with hard luck stories of horses that, through mistakes, poor judgement or just plain misfortune, managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

One of the unluckiest losers of recent times was Oscar Delta, ridden by 18-year-old amateur Jane Mangan, in the Foxhunter Chase in 2013. Having taken a 4-length lead over the favourite, Salisfy, at the second-last fence, Oscar jumped the final fence in front and was maintaining the advantage as he set off up the famous Cheltenham hill. However, about 150 yards from the winning post, the 10-year-old jinked inexplicably to his left, through a length of tape stretched across a gap in the running rail, and unseated his teenage jockey. Salsify swept by to win, unchallenged, by 20 lengths, leaving Mangan in tears.

Of course, unlucky losers are by no means the preserve of amateur riders, as amply demonstrated by Ruby Walsh – by far the most successful jockey in the history of the Cheltenham Festival – in the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle on Annie Power in 2015. Following the victories of Douvan, Un De Sceaux and Faugheen – all hot favourites, trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Walsh – earlier in the day, Annie Power lined up at prohibitive odds of 1/2, with bookmakers facing an estimated liability of between £50 million and £100 million in the event that she won. Annie Power travelled well throughout the race and took the lead at the second-last flight, but took off too soon at the final flight, hit the top bar on the way down and crashed to the ground.

Occasionally, redemption awaits for a hapless loser – Annie Power, for example, returned to Cheltenham to win the Champion Hurdle in 2016 – but other horses are just, well, unlucky. Tied Cottage, trained by Dan Moore and ridden by Tommy Carberry, made all the running in the 1979 Gold Cup until pitching on landing, and falling, after the final fence, handing the race to the ill-fated Alverton. Twelve months later, he again made all the running, beating Master Smudge by 8 lengths, only to be later disqualified after testing positive for theobromine, a banned substance, believed to have come from a contaminated batch of feed.

In the past decade, the Irish Independent Leading Trainer Award at the Cheltenham Festival has been presented to just four men, Gordon Elliott, Willie Mullins, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls. Collectively, in their careers as a whole, they have saddled 186 winners at the March showpiece meeting, but, while it’s hard to imagine, there was a time, in living memory, when their aggregate total was absolute, stone-cold zero.

On the eve of the Cheltenham Festival in 1985, Nicky Henderson had yet to shed his maiden tag, having saddled the beaten favourite, See You Then, in the Triumph Hurdle in 1984 and lost another promising young horse, Childown – who broke a leg at the second flight – in the same race. However, he wasted little time in doing so, saddling See You Then to win the Champion Hurdle – the first of three consecutive wins for the fragile, but highly talented, gelding – The Tsarevich to win the Mildmay of Flete Challenge Cup and First Bout to win the Triumph Hurdle. In fact, those three winners were enough to make Henderson leading trainer at the Festival for the first time.

Willie Mullins – currently the most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival with 61 winners – began training, in his own right, in 1988, but didn’t break his duck at the Festival until 1995. His initial success came courtesy of Tourist Attraction in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle but, despite building a reputation as a ‘specialist’ in the Champion Bumper – which he won half a dozen times over the next dozen years – he did not become leading trainer at the Festival for the first time until 2011.

Paul Nicholls was still riding, as stable jockey to David Barons, when Mullins took out a training licence. Indeed, that very same year he rode the unsuccessful favourite, Playschool, trained by Barons, in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Nicholls joined the training ranks in 1991 and, although it took him some time to announce his arrival, in 1999, he saddled Flagship Uberalles to win the Arkle Challenge Trophy, Call Equiname to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase and See More Business to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Gordon Elliott, by contrast, is a relative newcomer to the training ranks, having first taken out a licence in 2006. Remarkably, he saddled the winner of the Grand National, Silver Birch, in 2007, before he had saddled a winner in his native Ireland and nearly four years before he saddled his first winner at the Cheltenham Festival. He opened his account at the Festival with Chicago Grey in the National Hunt Chase in 2011, but in seven years since has added a further 21 to his winning tally, including six in 2017 and a record-equalling eight in 2018.