Timeform profile the highest-rated mares over jumps, including stars such as Dawn Run, Annie Power and Quevega.
Unlike most of their male counterparts in the National Hunt side of the sport, mares are key to breeding future generations of jumpers, but, for a long time, the racing programme offered little incentive for owners to campaign fillies and mares in the potentially riskier environment of racing over jumps. The introduction of a sex allowance in the 1980s was an important step forward, therefore, and in more recent decades opportunities for fillies and mares over jumps have expanded to encourage greater competition. There were no races restricted to mares at the Cheltenham Festival before 2008, for example, but the addition of a mares’ chase in 2021 brings that number to three.
The best mare in the Timeform era over jumps was Dawn Run (rated 173 over hurdles and 167 over fences) who emerged at just the right time to benefit from the introduction of the sex allowance in Britain in the 1983/84 season. She won eight of her nine starts that season, becoming just the second mare to win the Champion Hurdle and completing an unprecedented hat-trick by winning the equivalent races in Ireland and France as well. But Dawn Run’s exploits over hurdles were only half the story of a career which turned her into a jumping legend. Switched to fences, she won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on just her fifth start over the larger obstacles and she remains the only horse of either sex to have completed the Champion Hurdle/Gold Cup double.
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Dawn Run was top-class over both hurdles and fences but it was another Irish mare, Anaglogs Daughter (171), who boasts the highest rating for a mare over fences. Like Dawn Run who came along shortly after her, Anaglogs Daughter was tough and versatile, as well as having a tremendous amount of ability. No better than useful over hurdles, Anaglogs Daughter came into her own over fences where a combination of front-running coupled with often spectacular jumping made her hard to peg back, such as when winning the Arkle by 20 lengths. As well as competing before the sex allowance was introduced, there were few options for Anaglogs Daughter outside handicaps where she put up some notable weight-carrying performances.
Dawn Run’s racing career for Paddy Mullins was tragically cut short but even though she was denied a career at stud she left a legacy. It’s no coincidence that several of the other leading mares over jumps that have come along since have been trained by the Mullins family. Paddy Mullins also trained Asian Maze (162) early in her career, though on his retirement it was son Tom who oversaw much of her success, including a career-best effort to win the Aintree Hurdle, a race Dawn Run had also won.
Another of Paddy Mullins’ sons, Willie, trained the best female hurdler since the Dawn Run era, Annie Power (170+). She too was a wide-margin winner of the Aintree Hurdle in which she gained the last of her 15 career wins, following up her Champion Hurdle success in 2016 when becoming the fourth mare to win the race. The only two races she didn’t win came at the Cheltenham Festival, finishing second in the Stayers’ Hurdle on her only try at three miles, and infamously falling at the last with the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle at her mercy.
Willie Mullins had won six of the first seven runnings of the Mares’ Hurdle with the remarkable Quevega (164), one of the best staying hurdlers of her sex. Her dominance of that event begged the question of how she would have fared in the Stayers’ Hurdle but she repeatedly proved herself in open company at the Punchestown Festival instead where her record was barely less impressive, winning five consecutive editions of the World Series Hurdle.
Another French import like Quevega, Mullins also trained Apple’s Jade (162) in her juvenile season over hurdles before she developed into a high-class mare later in her career for Gordon Elliott. She was another to win the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle (she was beaten in both a Champion Hurdle, when starting favourite, and a Stayers’ Hurdle) and had a fine record on her home turf which included winning the Irish Champion Hurdle and three editions of the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle.
Martin Pipe was a pioneer of importing horses from France and among them was Lady Cricket (165), one of the best mares to race over fences this century, albeit not one of the most straightforward. She had a good record at Cheltenham though, and while a Festival success eluded her, she ran a career-best when second under top weight in the Mildmay of Flete, while her wins included the Thomas Pink (now Paddy Power) Gold Cup.
Dubacilla (166) was another of the best mares to have raced over fences since the era of Anaglogs Daughter and Dawn Run. From humble beginnings in the West Country, Dubacilla improved out of all recognition and in her final season, when trained by David Nicholson, she rounded off her career by finishing second in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and fourth in the Grand National.
Flakey Dove (166) and Lady Rebecca (165) were other British-bred mares who rose to the top from unlikely backgrounds and enjoyed popular followings as a result. Home-bred by the Price family in Herefordshire, the tough and game Flakey Dove improved with age and in 1994, at the age of eight, put up a career-best performance when becoming the third mare to win the Champion Hurdle. Along the way, Flakey Dove also won a Cleeve Hurdle, a race which in its former guise as a Grade 1 contest over two miles five furlongs was to provide the highlights of Lady Rebecca’s career. Lady Rebecca was beaten in all three of her appearances at the Festival, twice when well fancied for the Stayers’ Hurdle, but she won on all seven of the other occasions she raced at Cheltenham, completing a hat-trick in the Cleeve between 1999 and 2001.
Honeysuckle (165), who remains unbeaten after her first 13 starts under Rules, showed top-class form when winning the Irish Champion Hurdle and Champion Hurdle in 2021, earning her place among the top ten jumping mares in Timeform's experience. She still has the opportunity to improve her rating.
