Timeform's Phil Turner reflects on the Cheltenham Festival, picking out some of the key takeaways from four thrilling days at Prestbury Park.
“The British are coming” warned former Z Cars actor Colin Welland in a rousing acceptance speech at the 1982 Oscars when winning the Best Screenplay Academy Award for penning Chariots of Fire, the historical sports drama which dominated the main prizes at that year’s ceremony.
Patriotic racing fans were similarly bullish after the opening race to this year’s Cheltenham Festival, which saw Old Park Star (h157p) lead home a one-two-three-four of home-trained runners in the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle – the first such occurrence in that race since Al Ferof, Spirit Son, Sprinter Sacre and Cue Card filled the frame in a vintage renewal back in 2011.
However, as with the film industry back in the early-eighties, the result proved a false dawn with regards to any significant shift in the balance of power. Although the historical epic Gandhi followed up Chariots of Fire’s win at the following year’s Oscars, only five British-made films have been named Best Picture in over four decades since.
As for Cheltenham, the 2026 Prestbury Cup might have gone down to the final race but that paints a misleading picture, the fact Irish yards won 11 of the 12 remaining Grade 1 events after the Supreme suggesting their dominance at the top table is every bit as strong as ever – instead, a nine-three verdict for British yards in the meeting’s handicaps arguably says more about the BHA marks allotted to those from either side of the Irish Sea than anything else.
As ever, the chief source of Grade 1 wins was Willie Mullins, whose all-conquering yard collected seven of them as he became leading trainer at the meeting for the eighth year running.
That said, it isn’t always plain sailing for even Mullins at Cheltenham and Majborough (c177x) became his fifth odds-on favourite to suffer defeat in the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 11 years.
What should have been the crowning moment for the highest-rated chaser in training descended into an even more calamitous performance than Will Smith’s infamous slap at the 2022 Oscars, Majborough’s jumping problems resurfacing to such an extent that we’ve little option but to attach the symbol “x” (which denotes a poor jumper) to his Timeform rating – in the same season that megastar hurdler Constitution Hill was also awarded an “x”!
Happily, Mullins had a more than able understudy in Il Etait Temps (c174), who claimed the biggest win of an already stellar career with a comeback straight from the Hollywood playbook, his smooth 10-length success in the Queen Mother Champion Chase coming just seven weeks on from a tired fall in the Clarence House Chase at Ascot, where he picked himself up off the floor after several worrying minutes behind the screens.
Il Etait Temps is one of five horses (all trained by Mullins) currently rated 170 or above by Timeform and boasts the most solid record of that quintet. He’s been a model of consistency bar that Ascot blip, his record in Grade 1 chases now six wins from eight completed starts, claiming some notable scalps along the way.
Big reputation enhanced in absence
The only one of the top four that Il Etait Temps has yet to beat (or meet for that matter) is Fact To File (c175), who again emulated Eric Liddell at this year’s Festival as connections refused to run him on the Sabbath (Cheltenham Gold Cup day!) for the second year in a row. On this occasion, he didn’t defend his Ryanair Chase crown either, with Messrs McManus and Mullins pulling him out on the day unhappy with the ground on the New Course’s chase track.
To carry on the Chariots of Fire theme, the pair who filled the Harold Abrahams role to claim gold in Fact To File’s absence actually enhanced his reputation, the wide-margin wins by Heart Wood (c168) in the Ryanair Chase and Gaelic Warrior (c174) in the Cheltenham Gold Cup leaving a frustrating taste of what might have been.
Heart Wood’s ten-length defeat of a below-par Jonbon (167) represents a career-best effort but, even so, it’s impossible to forget how easily Fact To File had brushed him aside when they finished first and second in the 2025 Ryanair Chase.
Things aren’t quite so clear cut in Fact To File’s head-to-head with stable-companion Gaelic Warrior, though. The score currently stands at two-two and the level of form Gaelic Warrior ran to in powering clear of Jango Baie (c167) and 2025 Gold Cup hero Inothewayurthinkin (c165+) suggests things would have been much closer than on their most recent meeting when one-two in last month’s Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown, which saw Fact To File run out a five-length winner.
Both Jango Baie and Gaelic Warrior were bidding to become just the second Arkle Chase winner (after Alverton in 1979) to also land the Cheltenham Gold Cup and it was fitting that the latter completed that rare double given he’s proved remarkably versatile with regards to trip throughout his career.
Gaelic Warrior completed another piece of Festival history for his owners Rich and Susannah Ricci, who became the first to see their silks carried to victory in the same season’s Champion Hurdle and Cheltenham Gold Cup since Dorothy Paget with Solford and Roman Hackle in 1940 (Paget also achieved the feat twice in the early-1930s).
That double was initiated when Lossiemouth (h162) was finally allowed to take her chance in the Champion Hurdle at the third time of asking, in the process joining a select group of horses with four or more wins at the Festival. It’s not fanciful to suggest she should be a three-time Champion Hurdle winner given how things played out in the 2024 and 2025 renewals that she sidestepped in favour of easier pickings in the Mares' Hurdle.
Her performance on Tuesday did little alter that view too, as she comprehensively reversed DRF placings with fellow mare Brighterdaysahead (h157) to run out a six-and-a-half-length winner, with a further half-length back to The New Lion (h161p) in third. With Constitution Hill now pursuing a Flat career and obvious doubts about the future of Sir Gino (h164), there is no reason why Lossiemouth shouldn’t dominate the hurdling scene for a while yet – particularly as that sidelined pair’s trainer Nicky Henderson (who was without a Champion Hurdle runner for the first time in 20 years) may well send the aforementioned Old Park Star chasing next season.
The modern trend to send the cream of the novice hurdling crop straight over fences goes some way to explaining why the current two-mile hurdling division is languishing some way below the level of form posted by most previous generations – for example, even if you add the 7lb mares’ allowance to Lossiemouth’s current rating, it would still put her nearly a stone below the peak Timeform hurdles figure achieved by Night Nurse in the 1970s.
Front-running tactics seen to good effect
This year is the 50th anniversary of Night Nurse’s first Champion Hurdle win in 1976, when he became the first all-the-way winner of that race in 25 years, which prompted the inaugural edition of Timeform’s Chasers & Hurdlers annual to examine the well-worn myth that horses were ‘doing it the hard way’ when trying to make all: “There seems to be a prejudice against making the running with a good horse, or even with a fancied one for that matter. Under certain circumstances front-running tactics are highly appropriate.”
How times and habits change, eh? Many trainers and jockeys often prefer to make the running nowadays, whilst most serious punters would have spent much of their pre-Festival form study trying to decipher which horses were likely to be ridden prominently at Cheltenham, particularly over fences – no fewer than eight front-runners won at the latest Festival, six of those wins coming in chases.
The two Grade 1 novice chases both went to all-the-way winners, with the sure-footed Kargese (c155) taking advantage of late errors by the highly-touted pair Kopek des Bordes (c159p) and Lulamba (c162) to land the Arkle, whilst some prodigious leaps by Kitzbuhel (c158) in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase counted for plenty as he bravely held off better-fancied stable-companion Final Demand (c157+).
Bold jumping has long proved an asset over Cheltenham’s fences, so it arguably isn’t surprising that prominent tactics often work well around there. That said, the course executive’s long-standing policy of preserving a fresh strip of ground on the New Course for Gold Cup day by dolling off that inner portion of the track for the rest of its fixtures has been short-changing horses (and punters) for far too long, particularly when it comes to big fields.
Safety limits for chases on the New Course are presumably arrived at on the assumption that the full width of the track is being used and, given that the Thursday of the Festival (the first two days are held on the Old Course) regularly features two maximum-field handicap chases, it is easy to see how narrowing each obstacle could affect the shape of a race.
The two runnings of the Jack Richards Novices’ Handicap Chase in its current form provide a stark example of this. Although last year’s winner Caldwell Potter was clearly a handicap blot given his Grade 1-winning form before and since, the fact he was chased home by outsiders in second (125/1), third (66/1) and fifth (33/1) immediately cast some doubt as to the strength of the form, particularly as they were all in the first five throughout – that trio have managed just one win between them from 15 subsequent starts.
Similarly, although 2026 winner Meetmebythesea (c146p) is an exciting prospect who may well have won even without any potential front-running bias, the fact that the race was again dominated by those who raced up with the pace suggests those ridden in mid-division and further back were at a serious disadvantage – which is hardly a satisfactory state of affairs for some of the biggest betting races of the year. Ground management considerations will presumably rule out major changes being made but, at the very least, Cheltenham really should consider opening the full width of the track for all of the chases run on the New Course at the Festival.
Shambolic starts 'completely unacceptable'
Such results certainly haven’t gone unmissed by connections or jockeys and the quest to grab a prominent position has almost certainly contributed to the shambolic starts we’ve regularly endured at the Cheltenham Festival over the past decade or so.
“Everyone wants a good position. In some of these Cheltenham races, eighteen of you have been told to be in the first four – it’s not realistic! Horses are going to be on edge. If we are a little bit far back and break into a canter but no one is trying to gain an advantage, then I think a little bit of common sense should come into play and the trigger should be pulled.”
That quote by Harry Skelton is from 2020 and, depressingly, reveals how little has changed in the intervening period.
A succession of false starts, while frustrating, arguably isn’t the biggest issue here. Instead, it is the standard of the eventual restarts which is the real scandal, with numerous examples at the latest Festival (including several surprise flag starts which caught out jockeys) completely unacceptable for the biggest jumps meeting of the year, with plenty of punters seeing their bets up in smoke within seconds.
The fact that starting stalls weren’t introduced on British Flat courses until the mid-1960s (fully a quarter of a century after they were in common use in the US!) shows that British racing has a long history of dragging its heels with regards to significant overhaul of starting procedures, whilst the horror getaways for both the 1951 (12 first-fence casualties) and 1993 (void race) Grand Nationals serves as a reminder that embarrassing starts are nothing new over jumps too. In fairness, the BHA has already announced another review of the Festival’s starting procedures, so hopefully the situation will be improved by next year’s meeting.
That said, it’s a shame that the review is specific to just the Cheltenham Festival as it would be useful for racing’s rulers to ask themselves why there isn’t such a frenzied scramble to attain a good early position for the vast majority of day-to-day races and, as a spin-off question, whether they’re doing enough to enforce Rules 37.1 and 37.2 which state that jockeys must “ask their horse for timely, real and substantial efforts to achieve the best possible position” and “take all other reasonable and permissible measures throughout the race to ensure the horse is given a full opportunity to achieve the best possible position”.
Indeed, the plethora of well-fancied runners at the 2026 Cheltenham Festival who came into the meeting on the back of what could be politely described as “quiet” runs arguably isn’t the greatest advert for the sport.
Of course, jump racing’s biggest blockbuster in the eyes of the wider public remains the Grand National and plenty of potential Aintree runners were in action over the four days of Cheltenham, with the principals from both the Ultima Handicap Chase (first two Johnnywho and Jagwar plus final-fence casualty Search For Glory) and Cross Country Chase (Final Orders and Favouri de Champdou) advertising their claims, whilst the initial picks of the weights Iroko and (to a much lesser extent) Panic Attack rather fluffed their lines.
However, a look at the Grand National results in 2024 (Irish runners nine of first 11) and 2025 (one-two-three for Mullins with only one home-trained runner in first nine) suggests the Brits may have to again settle for bit parts rather than leading roles.
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