Some of the young guns in the Stayers' Hurdle

Paddy Power Stayers' Hurdle analysis: Young improvers Ma Shantou, Kabral Du Mathan and Honesty Policy look up to scratch

By Lewis Tomlinson

Horse Racing

Thu March 05, 2026 · 1h ago

Lewis Tomlinson assesses this year's Paddy Power Stayers' Hurdle and feels the younger, improving contingent are going to make their presence felt.

Turkish Super Lig vibes

People can be disparaging about staying hurdlers. A motley crew of failed chasers, failed two-milers and head-scratching horses that both trainers and punters have struggled to find the key to.

Now, as someone prone to an each-way swing at a big price, I’ve always enjoyed the slightly ragtag shape even the top staying hurdles can take and the variety of horses whose paths can cross in such races.

Sometimes, horses whose heydays are behind them can extend their time at the top level by switching to long distances, whilst it feels like a more common occurrence for contenders for championship honours to emerge from left field in the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle than in the other, shinier showpiece races.

Forgive me for using another niche football analogy, but there’s something quite Turkish Super Lig – the spiritual home of players you don’t really think about anymore – about the division at times.

Did anyone else realise that N’Golo Kante is at Fenerbahce now? Ederson is too, and so is Fred. I didn’t realise until writing this that Leroy Sane plays for Galatasaray, or that Ndidi’s at Besiktas. But yeah, of course they are, all of that just sounds so right.

And Ballyburn’s a staying hurdler? Well, he’s not really a chaser nowadays and he wouldn’t be an obvious Champion Hurdle horse, so yeah, I guess so, why not?

Asterion Forlonge had a crack at it in the twilight of his career, Klassical Dream briefly threatened to transition into a star stayer, even Mystical Power was trying his hand at long distances when we last saw him – I mean, what else would there be for him to do? It was even quite a common train of thought across recent seasons that the solution to Ahoy Senor’s problems would be to send him back over the smaller obstacles; a year or two too late, perhaps, on everything he’s shown (or not shown) this year.

For all the staying hurdlers have often been seen as the poor relations to the other championship divisions, in the early part of the 21st century a succession of genuinely top-notch thoroughbreds meant the division merited its billing alongside the race's more glamorous cousins. Baracouda, Iris's Gift, Inglis Drever, leading onto Big Buck’s and Thistlecrack. Proper, proper horses, able to regularly run to Timeform ratings on a par with their speedier 2m counterparts.

There was often real opposition for these big guns, as well. In all bar one of the Stayers' Hurdles – or the World Hurdle if you’d like – run between 2000 and 2016, the winner attained a Timeform figure upwards of 160. The vast majority of runners-up also ran to 160 or higher, whilst even a handful of third-placed efforts were deemed good enough to break into this high-class bracket, not least that of Limestone Lad, who still achieved a rating of 167 when filling that position behind Baracouda and Iris's Gift in the 2003 renewal.

In the past decade, though, there hasn’t been one; no winners, never mind runners-up. The 160s have remained untroubled by the latest crops of long-distance hurdlers.

So where have the top-notch stayers gone?

This year, the Stayers' Hurdle has been bumped out of prime position. The Ryanair, another race that no one – apart from the rightful favourite for the Cheltenham Gold Cup – wants to win, now holds the new headline slot at 16:00.

The Ryanair has developed a habit of eclipsing the more traditional blue riband events; performances in recent years from Vautour, Allaho and Un de Sceaux all producing displays that have gone down in Festival folklore in winning the still not-always-popular intermediate Grade 1. Moments for the highlight reel from recent Stayers' have been scarce, and you can see the logic behind the tinkering to the schedule, minor though it may be.

Saying all this, I must admit that the drop in quality hasn't perhaps been as stark as that drought would suggest, the division leaders generally just a step or two down from their predecessors.

Paisley Park, the dominant stayer on the scene in the years pre-Covid, knocked on the door but could only go as high as a career-best 159 when winning his only Stayers' Hurdle in 2019. Back-to-back winner Flooring Porter's best rating (158) came on the first of his two victories two years later. Sire Du Berlais ran to 154 when edging out fellow veteran Dashel Drasher in 2023, Teahupoo to 157 in 2024 and Bob Olinger to 158 last season.

Going back slightly further in time, Penhill and Nichols Canyon both scored with performance ratings of 153, perhaps a shade underwhelming for a Festival championship race, but not quite drastic as that of Lisnagar Oscar, who only needed to run to 146 when capitalising on Paisley Park’s below-par effort in 2020, a figure bested both the winner and runner-up in the Pertemps only an hour and a half earlier. Not the finest day for the staying scene.

To be fair, it's not just the staying division that has seemed to suffer across the past decade, the overall hurdling landscape not quite as pretty a picture as it once was. Recent Champion Hurdles have been essentially uncompetitive; the last four have all seen the favourite go off at odds-on and we have to go back to Annie Power in 2016 to find one with an SP greater than 2/1.

The talent-drain of promising Flat stayers to the Far East and Australia has often been proposed as a reason why both hurdling divisions have seemed to lose a bit of spark, alongside a healthy proportion of leading novice hurdlers immediately going over fences rather than contend for Championship honours in their second seasons.

Certainly, aspects of top-level hurdling have evolved out of all recognition across the last fifteen years or so.

Take the 2009 Champion Hurdle, for example, which saw a now-inconceivable 21-runner field line up. The first three home there – Punjabi, Celestial Halo and Binocular – all began their careers on the Flat, as did defending champion Katchit. Of those remaining in contention this year, only Alexei and Poniros have any Flat experience at all and the Stayers’ seems guaranteed to be free of such types as well, with only the almost-certainly Mares'-bound Wodhooh having commenced their career on the level amongst those still entered.

Useful Flat performers making the transition to smart hurdler had been as common of a pipeline for those over longer distances as well - Penhill, Nichols Canyon, Inglis Drever and Solwhit all having confirmed themselves as distinctly above average performers on the level before showing even better form over timber. Those taking this pathway are much fewer, and much further between.

Two for Tea?

For the first time in a long time, at least, there is a hurdler rated above 160 lining up in the Stayers’ this season. Far from it being some fresh-faced, new kid on the block though, it’s our old friend Teahupoo, who will be having his fourth crack at the stayers' championship in 2026. His seven-length defeat of familiar rival Bob Olinger at Leopardstown over Christmas was rated as a career best from the Gordon Elliott-trained nine-year-old.

In theory, an effort of the same merit would’ve been good enough to have won every Stayers’ Hurdle in the last ten years, so Teahupoo’s position at the head of the market for next week is more than justified. Despite having met with defeat in the race twice already, a haul of seven Grade 1s across light campaigns has solidified his position as the 'one to beat' in the division, his latest outing in fact the only time he’s not been sent off favourite when tackling a staying trip.

It’s also worth noting that, with State Man and Sir Gino both injury stricken, and Constitution Hill now at the beginning of a new career, Teahupoo will arrive at Cheltenham, alongside The New Lion, as the joint-highest rated hurdler in action this season.

Of course, these notable absentees have once again left the two-mile division decimated, and with the market indicating Lossiemouth is likelier to line up against her fellow mares than have a belated tilt at the Champion, it’d be hard to argue against this season’s Stayers’ Hurdle looking a superior race in terms of both spectacle and quality.

In fact, this season’s Stayers Hurdle features no less than eight horses rated within Timeform’s top twenty hurdlers - and that’s without Dan Skelton’s exciting Kabral Du Mathan, who also features in this elite cohort, being supplemented. Compare that to the Champion Hurdle, for which only four, Lossiemouth included, were confirmed on Wednesday afternoon.

The staying scene had begun to look rather stale towards the end of last season, perhaps best showcased by Lucky Place’s position as second-favourite in last year’s Stayers’. He went into the race with a Timeform rating of 148, achieved for beating Gowel Road by three quarters of a length in the Relkeel and at least half a stone shy of what it would usually take to win even a below-par renewal, but he was younger and less exposed than the bulk of his opposition and his prominent position in the market surely represented a line of thinking that new blood had to come from somewhere.

New blood could be up to scratch

How encouraging is it, then, that there are three fancied runners that’ll head into this year’s race retaining a Timeform 'p'?

Highest rated of this trio is Emma Lavelle’s highly-progressive Ma Shantou. Having began the season rated just 126, last season’s Albert Bartlett seventh has developed in the top-rated British-trained stayer, really impressing with his strength at the finish when besting Impose Toi in the Cleeve on Trials Day.

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The comparisons to his yard’s superstar Paisley Park have obviously been drawn before, their profiles of rapid improvement in their second seasons almost identical, but a differential of only 4lb between what Ma Shantou has achieved to date and what Paisley Park achieved at his very peak is perhaps more surprising, especially considering better still is expected to come from Ma Shantou.

At a general 4/1, Honesty Policy is a couple of points shorter than Ma Shantou in most books and also retains the 'p' after his encouraging comeback third in the Long Walk. He only made his debut last January but improved rapidly in the following months, landing Grade 1 honours at Aintree on his first start in JP McManus’s silks prior to running Jasmin De Vaux close at Punchestown. He’s a fluent-travelling sort, his style easier on the eye than that of many young stayers, and it’s easy to see why one with such an unexposed profile is priced as the biggest threat to Teahupoo.

And Kabral Du Mathan is a different type again; pacier, with a wicked turn of foot, and it’s not too difficult to see why connections had initially planned to bypass Cheltenham in favour of a crack at Aintree. He evidently has stamina to prove, his stylish success in the Relkeel on New Year’s Day the first time he’d gone beyond 19f, but Skelton has seemed increasingly confident since that his charge will prove as adept over long distances and if that's the case, his natural speed will surely prove a rare asset at 3m.

Far from being misfits or horses on recovery missions, this trio are very much exciting types for whom top-level long-distance hurdles have been plan-A for some time.

You'd probably have to be an optimist to believe that the sort of 170+ figures recorded by Baracouda, Big Buck’s and Iris’s Gift – a hurdler so good he went off favourite for an open Grade 1 on chase debut – are in touching distance at this stage, but it’s undoubtedly the most promising bunch we’ve had for many years and it’d likely be a shade underwhelming, given that we’ve already seen Teahupoo perform to the level this year, if we couldn’t have one punch back through the 160 ceiling again at Cheltenham this time around.

Cheltenham Festival 2026: Stable Tours

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