Cheltenham Festival Focus

The Supreme Novices’ Hurdle is a Grade 1 novices’ hurdle race run over 2 miles and 87 yards on the Old Course. Open to horses aged four years and upwards, with ‘novice’ status over hurdles – that is, having started the season without a win over the smaller obstacles – the race has the distinction of being the opening contest on the first day of the Cheltenham Festival. As such, in a normal, non-Covid year, the start is greeted by a deafening cheer from the grandstands, known as the ‘Cheltenham Roar’.

The Supreme Novices’ Hurdle was inaugurated, as the Gloucestershire Hurdle, at the first post-war Cheltenham Festival, in 1946. Indeed, such was its popularity that, until 1972, when it became a single race, it was split into two, or occasionally three, separate divisions. In 1974, for sponsorship purposes, the race became known as the Lloyds Bank Champion Novices’ Hurdle and, in 1978, as the Waterford Crystal Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Waterford Crystal ceased sponsorship in 1991, but the ‘Supreme Novices’ Hurdle’ portion of the race title has remained ever since.

Befitting the ‘championship’ race for novice hurdlers over the minimum distance, the roll of honour for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle includes such luminaries as Flyingbolt, L’Escargot and Bula and, more recently, Brave Inca, Vautour and Altior. Willie Mullins, trainer of Vautour (2014), also saddled Tourist Attraction (1995), Ebaziyan (2007), Champagne Fever (2013), Douvan (2015), Klassical Dream (2019) and Appreciate It (2021) for a total of seven wins, so far, and is the leading handler in the history of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

Looking ahead to the 2023 renewal, due off at 1:30pm on Tuesday, March 15, Mullins, once again, holds a strong hand. His Weatherbys Champion Bumper winner, Facile Vega, heads the ante-post betting, while Hunters Yarn, Champ Kiely, Grangeclare West and Hercule Du Seuil are all in the first half a dozen or so in the market.

Under the auspices of Michael O’Leary, who is also the chief executive of Ryanair, Gigginstown House Stud continues to wind down its National Hunt operation. Consequently, the Co. Westmeath outfit may never again hit the heights that saw it win the leading owner award at the 2018 Cheltenham Festival with seven winners.

Nevertheless, since Gigginstown House Stud was founded in 2000, a total of 313 runners have carried its now familiar maroon and white silks at Cheltenham and 33 of them have won, yielding nearly £4 million in prize money. At the Cheltenham Festival, Gigginstown first hit the headlines when War Of Attrition, trained by Michael ‘Mouse’ Morris, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2006. Don Cossack, trained by Gordon Elliott, would do so again in 2016.

Of course, dual Grand National winner Tiger Roll has also left an indelible mark on the Cheltenham Festival. Once described by O’Leary as ‘a little rat of a thing’, the dimunitive gelding won the Triumph Hurdle in 2014, the National Hunt Challenge Cup in 2017 and the Glenfarclas Chase three times, in 2018, 2019 and 2021. Other notable Festival winners down the years include Weapon’s Amnesty, who won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle in 2009 and the RSA Chase in 2010, and Samcro, who won the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle in 2018 and the Marsh Novices’ Chase in 2020.