I love specific statistics. So here’s some of the Cheltenham Festival’s best.
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Joe BloGGs
Other sports love to bombard you with stats. You can find out the percentage of baseline points won of your favourite tennis players, which niche record Manchester United have broken for all the wrong reasons lately, and there are numbers in every single cricket match that would bewilder any outsiders, or even some insiders. And anyone from America.
But racing tends to keep theirs under wraps. No matter though, because I decided to look into the winners at every Cheltenham Festival since 1988, where records are readily available, and come up with my favourite five facts and stats, as well as the stories behind them.
1. Bob Olinger possesses the furthest Cheltenham Festival winning distance – but shouldn’t have even won
40 lengths is a long long way. It’s genuinely difficult to win any race by that far, so we should surely appreciate Bob Olinger’s Turners Novices’ Chase success as one of the greatest ever feats in racing? After all, the runner-up, Busselton, would win the Kerry National off a mark of 142 just six months later. Henry De Bromhead’s charge had to have put up an extraordinary performance to beat him by so far.
Well…not quite. This race remains fresh in many racing fans’ memory, as Galopin Des Champs was bounding 12 lengths clear, and set to win by almost as far as Bob Olinger eventually did, when crumpling on landing after the last. It is the dual Gold Cup winner’s only non-completion over fences and came in the most dramatic of circumstances.
It also ensured the unlikeliest place in history for Bob Olinger. Despite being a horse destined for second, he became the widest-margin winner of a Cheltenham Festival race in the past 40 years. He even beat Arkle.
2. Two more in the top ten of winning distances might not have won either
Incredibly, Looks Like Trouble won four chases in his career by 30 lengths. One of those was the 1999 Royal & SunAlliance Novice Chase at 16/1, crowning a run of significant improvement largely due to much slicker jumping.
However, in an era in which Irish trainers were greater underdogs than the home side are now, this race was more memorable for the fall of 5/4 shot Nick Dundee at the third last. He was a rare chaser in the Coolmore silks and left Looks Like Trouble clear on his own after the pair had simply coasted clear of the remainder of their rivals.
Even more infamously, Salsify was left with the freedom of the Cheltenham Hill to ease to a 20-length triumph in the 2013 Foxhunters. The splendid isolation only occurred after poor Jane Mangan was unseated from winner elect Oscar Delta after the final fence when her mount jinked into the rails. Salsify therefore defended his title, and was still racing in hunter chases seven years later at the age of 15.
As for Jane Mangan, whatever happened to her?
3. There were as many winners at 50/1+ at the ‘89 Festival than at shorter than 4/1
Those were the days, eh?
In the 16 non-handicaps for the 2025 Cheltenham Festival, there are markets, NRNB or otherwise, which have 2/1 favourites or shorter. There was just one winner below those odds in 1989: Barnbrook Again as the 7/4 favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Only two of those 11 aforementioned favourites would have to win to surpass the ‘89 number, but what if we extended it further? Only three horses won at odds below 4/1; if Desert Orchid was not beginning to get up in the 1989 Gold Cup, there would have been just two.
Concurrently, there were three winners at the meeting at 50/1 or higher, including two 66/1 shots on Gold Cup day as Ikdam won the Triumph Hurdle and Observer Corps claimed the now defunct Cathcart Challenge Cup. Yahoo would have added a 25/1 success in the Gold Cup had the ground taken just a little more of Dessie’s legs.
Speaking of massive outsiders, second to Observer Corps in that year’s Cathcart was a farmer’s horse by the name of Norton’s Coin. 12 months on, he’d make 66/1 look terrible value.
4. In 1993, the only winning favourite in the Cheltenham Festival was in the Coral Cup – the race with the lowest winning percentage for favourites
It is absurd to think that any fewer than five favourites would win at a modern day Cheltenham Festival, but in 1993, only one was victorious. It came in the inaugural running of the Coral Cup, and provided us with a delightful racing paradox.
Olympian scored at 4/1 in the race, but at a Festival in which he was the only winning favourite, he did so in a race that has, in terms of winning percentage, provided the fewest winning favourites since it came into being, with the exception of the Mares’ Chase. Though including that race, only inaugurated in 2021, spoils the fun.
Before he would have even known it, Olympian was the ultimate Cheltenham Festival trends buster. He might not have known it anyway I suppose, being a horse, but Martin Pipe and Peter Scudamore may recognise it now.
5. Willie Mullins hasn’t won a handicap chase at the Cheltenham Festival
This one is cited more often, but is still worth remarking upon.
That’s right, the man who gets a rash every time he sends out a loser at Cheltenham has not just faIled to win one of the races at the yearly Festival, but managed to miss out on an entire class of race since he sent out his first winner in 1995.
He has bigger prizes to keep him interested, of course. He rarely ever fails to have contenders in the Grade 1 championships, but if he is ever preparing a succession plan at Closutton, ticking a Cheltenham handicap chase off the list before he does may be towards the top of it. It’s hardly like he struggles with the handicap hurdles: he has won five of the last ten County Hurdles alone.
GG Jumps Journal – Is the Gold Cup Always the Championship at the Cheltenham Festival?
Unsurprisingly, Willie Mullins is right: the Gold Cup, or its equivalent at any racing festival should be the pinnacle and scheduled as such. Joe BloGGs Galopin Des Champs deserved to be the last of the Dublin Racing Festival’s Grade 1 heroes, though it’s fair to say Saturday’s crowd certainly revelled in witnessing a truly great…
Wed 05 Feb 2025Fascinations & Irritations
Cheltenham and Aintree are edging closer all the time. It’s an exciting time for racing.
Fascination – The Grand National Weights
The Grand National weights announcement feels like an anachronism, but still has an impact. We have detailed records of horses, form and handicap marks at our fingertips at all times and yet still the BHA’s dedicated lunchtime announcement sees significant swings in the betting.
The biggest occurred as Inothewayurthinkin shot ahead of defending champion I Am Maximus to become the clear favourite. We knew about him already though: he’d won the Kim Muir at least year’s Cheltenham Festival, took a Grade 1 novice event at Aintree thereafter and has been campaigned at the top level ever since.
Even his eyecatching, staying-on fourth in the Irish Gold Cup occurred before the weights were properly revealed and yet still the market adjusted markedly to make him a best-priced 10/1 betting leader for the great race. Strange though it is, the weights announcement is one of the few remaining aspects that separate the National from any other race and its impact should be enjoyed.
Irritation – Unseated Riders
Strong disclaimer: this is not a criticism of jockeys being unseated. Mistakes and accidents happen.
However, from merely an aesthetic point of view, and especially when the money is down, there is nothing more irritating than seeing your horse make a slight mistake, just enough to unbalance the rider and unship him from the saddle. This is directly related to last week’s “Tip for the Weekend”, as Yeah Man pecked and derailed Sean Flanagan.
It leaves that critical feeling of “what if?” Obviously, Yeah Man would have won by at least five lengths, but in other examples the unknown is tricky to cope with as a punter.
GG Jumps Journal – Do Nicky Henderson’s Runners Really Miss the Cheltenham Festival More Often?
Sir Gino might be the unluckiest jumps horse in training. But he is not alone among big name Cheltenham Festival absentees in recent seasons. No Fascinations & Irritations Firstly though, it’s been a sad enough week for the racing world without my gauche fascinations and irritations to comment on it. Instead, I’ll simply encourage anyone…
Wed 12 Feb 2025Tip for the Weekend
A bit of bad luck is inevitable betting on racing every now and again. It would be nice to end that spate this weekend.
Knowing which horses Willie Mullins will run in the Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse this weekend is not easy. I Am Maximus will be one, but Minella Cocooner is no longer in the Gold Cup and will surely need another run prior to Aintree. He would get 12lb from the National hero, as well as 8lb and 12lb from two of his other three stablemates, with only Nick Rockett off levels, who he has already beaten conceding him weight. Better ground suits and this would be a welcome and rare drop in class for the nine-year-old.