Jonbon not alone among top-class jumpers lacking a Cheltenham Festival win

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Sun February 22, 2026 · 3h ago

John Ingles looks at the Festival records of top-notch jumpers Wayward Lad, Beef Or Salmon and Bird's Nest who all missed out at Cheltenham.

Henderson horse in pretty decent company

Jonbon’s latest win in last weekend’s Ascot Chase took his number of Grade 1 wins to a dozen. Besides Ascot, his other top-level wins have come at either Aintree or Sandown but not at Cheltenham. He’s a dual Grade 2 winner at the track in the Shloer Chase but his three visits to the Festival have all ended in defeat. When Jonbon doesn’t win, he finishes second, something he has done in the Supreme Novices’, the Arkle and last season’s Queen Mother Champion Chase.

As a hurdler, he was unfortunate to belong to the same novice crop as stablemate Constitution Hill who was never better than when trouncing Jonbon in the Supreme to end his unbeaten record. Jonbon wasn’t beaten again until the Arkle a year later when he succumbed to another top-notcher in El Fabiolo, though much like Constitution Hill, the winner’s jumping demons surfaced later in his career.

In the Champion Chase at last year’s Festival, it was Jonbon’s jumping which unusually let him down, spoiling his best opportunity to fill that gap in his CV. Sent off odds on, he lost his place completely after a bad mistake at the ninth but plugged on to take a remote second behind Marine Nationale.

So is Jonbon destined to be an equine version of Ivan Lendl? The Czech-born tennis player was world number one with multiple Grand Slam titles to his name but never managed to win at Wimbledon where he twice reached the final.

If so, Jonbon isn’t in bad company. Only 28 horses a year get to become a Festival winner and fewer still had that opportunity when it was a three-day meeting in the past, so it’s inevitable that even some top-class jumpers have missed out on the glory that comes with winning at Cheltenham in March.

One of those was the subject of this column a couple of months ago. In his long career, top-class chaser Wayward Lad won at no fewer than 16 different tracks, but Cheltenham wasn’t one of them. Best known for becoming the first horse to win the King George VI Chase three times, Wayward Lad ran nine times at Cheltenham in all, including at six Festivals, so his lack of success there certainly wasn’t for the want of trying.

As a novice chaser, Wayward Lad’s jumping was nothing like as polished as it was to become later in his career, and it let him down in his first race at the Festival, the 1981 Sun Alliance Chase. Sent off second favourite, a bad blunder at the second fence set the tone for the rest of the race and he was eased to beat only one other finisher once his chance had gone. That was the only time he finished out of the first two in completed starts in his novice season and one of the handful of times he finished out of the money in his whole career.

Wayward’s Lad remaining Festival appearances all came in the Gold Cup which he contested five years running, starting with the famous 1983 race in which his trainer Michael Dickinson saddled the first five home. Injured after winning his first King George that season, Dickinson did well to get Wayward Lad to Cheltenham at all, so with that in mind his third place behind Bregawn and Captain John was a creditable effort having even looked the possible winner going to the final fence.

Wayward Lad’s next two Gold Cup tries were nothing like as good. He was particularly disappointing when sent off the 6/4 favourite a year later, making a number of jumping errors before his rider Robert Earnshaw pulled him up before two out when he was well beaten. Nothing came to light to explain his poor run. Expectations were lower in 1985 when he went into the Gold Cup after three defeats, including in the King George and subsequently a handicap at Ayr. Still in touch three out in the Gold Cup, he never looked like challenging in the straight and managed only eighth behind Forgive’N Forget.

Wayward Lad was therefore an eleven-year-old when running his best race in the Gold Cup in 1986. This time it was the weather which denied Wayward Lad a run between the King George, which he won for the final time, and the Festival. Forging ahead with a fine jump at the last, Wayward Lad finally looked like changing his Cheltenham fortunes when looking sure to win halfway up the run-in, but as he began to tire and edge left, long-time leader Dawn Run found extra reserves to run him down in the last 25 yards. While Dawn Run made her bit of history by becoming the first to win the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup, she denied Wayward Lad the chance to become the first since Arkle to win the King George and Gold Cup in the same season.

In his final Gold Cup in 1987, Wayward Lad looked sure to be placed in the race for a third time but landed awkwardly and stumbled jumping the last in second place. Not for the first time, he couldn’t sustain his challenge up the hill and wound up fifth behind The Thinker.

Festival win never on the menu

A couple of decades later, another top-class chaser good enough to win a Gold Cup but without a win at Cheltenham from repeated attempts was Beef Or Salmon. Trained in Ireland by Michael Hourigan, Beef Or Salmon had an excellent record on his home turf where his haul of big wins between 2002 and 2007 included three editions of the Ericsson or Lexus (now Savills) Chase, the same number of Irish Gold Cups, two Champion Chases, a John Durkan and a Punchestown Gold Cup. But it was a different story at Cheltenham where the stiffer fences and truly-run nature of the Gold Cup found him out.

Like Wayward Lad, Beef Or Salmon contested five consecutive Gold Cups, starting with the 2003 edition. Although a novice, having only made his chasing debut the previous autumn, he had already bagged his first Lexus and Irish Gold Cup by then and was unbeaten in four starts over fences. As a result, he was sent off at 5/1, looking the main danger to the previous year’s winner Best Mate, but fell as early as the third fence in a race where Best Mate easily retained his crown.

READ: Cheltenham Festival 2026 Stable Tours

By the time Beef Or Salmon and Best Mate clashed again in the following season’s Gold Cup, they had already met each other in a ‘home game’ for Beef Or Salmon at Leopardstown in the Ericsson in which Best Mate easily landed the odds with Beef Or Salmon beaten 13 lengths in third. He got a lot closer to the winner in the Gold Cup and ran well in staying on for fourth, three and a half lengths behind Best Mate, having struggled to go the pace for much of the final circuit.

Beef Or Salmon finally got his revenge on Best Mate in the following season’s Lexus Chase and, in the latter’s absence from the 2005 Gold Cup, Beef Or Salmon looked to have leading claims in an open year and a substandard renewal. But it was the King George winner Kicking King who justified favouritism while Beef Or Salmon ran no sort of race, needing reminders early on and eventually pulling up on the final circuit, with a post-race scope revealing he was suffering from an infection.

Beef Or Salmon did at least complete in his last two Gold Cups but finished well beaten in both. He was a leading contender again in 2006 when proving himself as good as ever at Leopardstown, landing the odds in both the Lexus and Irish Gold Cup. He also put up his best effort in Britain earlier that season when runner-up to Kingscliff in the first running of the Betfair Chase at Haydock. Despite his Cheltenham record, Beef Or Salmon was sent off the 4/1 favourite in a field of 22 for the Gold Cup but turned in another lacklustre display, finishing only eleventh in an Irish-dominated race won by War of Attrition. He was beaten further still in blinkers, after making the running for a change, a year later when Kauto Star won his first Gold Cup.

Other 'celebs' who missed out...

If there’s a hurdler whose lack of a Cheltenham Festival win leaves a gaping hole in his record, then it has to be Bird’s Nest. A career-best rating of 176 would have made him easily good enough to win most modern-day Champion Hurdles, but he had the misfortune to belong to a golden generation of some of the best hurdlers in Timeform’s experience.

Like Jonbon, Bird’s Nest did win at Cheltenham, just not at the Festival. He won the Bula Hurdle there three times along with other top hurdles elsewhere, also winning the Fighting Fifth and Wolverhampton Champion Hurdle Trial three times each, the Scottish Champion Hurdle twice and was awarded the Christmas Hurdle.

Over the years, Bird’s Nest beat Comedy of Errors, Sea Pigeon and Night Nurse – the winners of six Champion Hurdles between them – more than once, but despite six attempts, he could never make the breakthrough in that race himself in which his form figures read 257537.

He ran an excellent race in his first Champion Hurdle in 1976 when beaten two and a half lengths by Night Nurse, though the same race revealed his tendency to hang left under pressure, a trait which didn’t help his cause at the highest level, certainly not in an era when competition among the top two-mile hurdlers was so fierce. Later in his career, those quirks meant he acquired the Timeform ‘squiggle’, though in 1980 he was placed in the Champion Hurdle for a second time, finishing third behind fellow ten-year-old Sea Pigeon and the former dual winner Monksfield.

Finally, while Jonbon currently has three second places at the Festival to his name, it’s worth remembering J. P. McManus has owned another jumper with a more frustrating record of Festival near-misses. Get Me Out of Here might not have been Champion Hurdle standard but he was a smart hurdler who, from five starts at the Festival, was beaten a head in the Supreme Novices’, a nose in the County Hurdle and a short head on one of the two occasions he was runner-up in the Coral Cup!

Jonbon not alone among top-class jumpers lacking a Cheltenham Festival win

Henderson horse in pretty decent company

Festival win never on the menu

Other 'celebs' who missed out...

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