Cheltenham Festival Preview: Cloudy skies but a welcome return of past winners

Traditionally, it’s a roar that greets the start of the Cheltenham Festival when the runners jump off in the Supreme, the first race on Tuesday. This year, though, listen carefully, and it could be a sigh of relief that will be heard. According to the doom-mongers, the Festival was all set to become a casualty of equine flu, but happily that threat receded as quickly as it had appeared. Eighteen years ago, the Festival wasn’t so lucky, when the outbreak of foot and mouth first caused its postponement, and then its abandonment altogether. Even so, this year’s Festival takes place against an unsettling wider backdrop of boycotts over prize money – not that the Pertemps Final is in any danger of being reduced to a two-horse race – not to mention the looming deadline of Brexit.

There was no Festival, or ‘National Hunt Meeting’ in 1943 or 1944 due to the war, but the biggest threat to the meeting over the years has always been the weather in one form or another. Snow, floods and frost have all resulted in abandonments or postponements during Cheltenham’s history – two Gold Cups were lost completely during the 1930’s, for example, and the 1978 renewal was just the most recent to have been delayed until April - while the latest act of God to disrupt the meeting came in 2008 when strong winds caused the second day of the Festival to be abandoned.

1987 Cheltenham Gold Cup,was snowing heavily that day,race won by The Thinker ridden by Ridley Lamb. pic.twitter.com/Sxgg9BGn0N

— Anaglogs Daughter (@AnaglogsDaughtr) 21 August 2018

This winter and spring, so far at least, the weather has largely been benign. Exactly a year after ‘the Beast from the East’ brought arctic conditions to the British Isles, the thermometer hit record highs in the last week of February. However, the unusually dry winter has brought its own problems, particularly for Irish trainers. It’s the reason, for example, why the Gold Cup favourite Presenting Percy has been seen in public only once – over hurdles - this season (though that’s once more than his trainer), and also accounts for Willie Mullins not needing to charter his own ferry to bring all his Festival runners over this year.

In the circumstances, therefore, the rain-clouds gathering over Prestbury Park, bringing with them the promise of more ‘normal’ jumping ground, are more welcome in many quarters than they otherwise would be. Last year’s Festival, on the other hand, was run on unusually testing going by recent standards for the meeting. Timeform called the ground ‘soft’ on the first three days and heavy on Gold Cup day, conditions which played into the hands of dour stayer Native River, another who has been waiting all season for the ground to come right for him again.

Native River v Might Bite - a Gold Cup for the ages 😍

10 days until we do it all again at The Festival™️ presented by @MagnersUK pic.twitter.com/KU0S5kI53E

— CheltenhamRacecourse (@CheltenhamRaces) 2 March 2019

In spite of what has been, for various reasons, not just meteorological ones, 'a funny old winter' in the words of Nicky Henderson, there’s a very reassuring look to this year’s Festival where the prospect of a large number of last year’s winners returning to do battle again makes it very much business as usual. Of last year’s 28 winners, only a handful have either not been entered in the first place for a return visit, or have since been ruled out. Chief absentees among last year’s winners are Penhill and Samcro who had both been scheduled to run in the Stayers’ Hurdle. The fragile Penhill was perhaps always at some risk of not being able to defend his Stayers’ crown, whereas for Samcro, the Stayers’ had briefly looked like being the race in which he would attempt to rebuild his reputation - who would have thought we’d have been saying that this time last year? But much can happen in twelve months as shown by the hot favourite for the Stayers’ Hurdle Paisley Park, a very different horse now from the one who trailed home last in last year’s Albert Bartlett.

There could be as many as a dozen of last year’s Festival winners bidding to win those same races again. Native River’s repeat bid is particularly welcome as other recent Gold Cup winners have not been able to defend their titles - 2014 winner Lord Windermere (pulled up twelve months later) was the last to do so. Native River is therefore aiming to be the first dual winner since Kauto Star won back the Gold Cup, after losing it to stablemate Denman, ten years ago. It’s been a while therefore since the stars of Ditcheat had their annual jousts for the Gold Cup, but in King George winner Clan des Obeaux Paul Nicholls has a big chance of winning the race for a fifth time to equal the record set by Arkle’s trainer Tom Dreaper.

Also on the verge of taking a share in Festival history is Buveur d’Air, winner of the last two Champion Hurdles and seeking to become only the sixth horse to win three. His owner J. P. McManus had the last triple Champion Hurdle winner, Istabraq (arguably the chief sufferer from the abandonment of the 2001 Festival, as it denied him a chance of going for a fourth straight win), while trainer Nicky Henderson has already handled a three-time winner, See You Then, who completed his hat-trick in 1987.

Is the hat-trick on? 🐎🐎🐎

Here's a look back as Buveur D'Air won the Champion Hurdle at @CheltenhamRaces in 2018 pic.twitter.com/doHimWB3fo

— ITV Racing (@itvracing) 5 March 2019

Buveur d’Air hadn’t been beaten since finishing third in the Supreme at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival, though his winning run was finally brought to an end by his own stable-companion Verdana Blue in the Christmas Hurdle. However, she could be the least of his worries among his female rivals in the Champion Hurdle, with Apple’s Jade and Laurina other mares trying to become just the fifth of their sex to win it, both Festival winners already. The expected absence of the latter pair from the Mares’ Hurdle gives Laurina’s stablemate Benie des Dieux a clear chance of winning that race for the second year running, which would also mean a tenth success for her trainer Willie Mullins.

Unlike Buveur d’Air, the unbeaten run of his stable-companion Altior, winner of that 2016 Supreme, is still intact three years later. He’s added an Arkle and a Queen Mother Champion Chase to his Festival record since then, and has now gone undefeated in seventeen starts all told over hurdles and fences. A second Champion Chase on Wednesday would mean Altior equals the feat of Big Buck’s, whose eighteen consecutive victories included a record four World (Stayers’) Hurdles between 2009 and 2012.

The strength of opposition to Altior rests largely in the hands of Willie Mullins, whose three contenders Min, Footpad and Un de Sceaux would each be good enough to win the race in an average year. The Ryanair offers a tempting Altior-free alternative for all three, the 2016 Supreme runner-up Min having chased home Altior for a second time at the Festival in last year’s Champion Chase, while Un de Sceaux, a veteran of battles with an even mightier two-miler from Seven Barrows in Sprinter Sacre, suffered a rare defeat of his own at the hands of Altior in the Tingle Creek in December.

Altior isn’t the only Festival runner bidding to win at the meeting for a fourth time. Fellow nine-year-old Tiger Roll might not be going for a fourth consecutive win at Cheltenham, but his Festival record is already a remarkable one, with the small matter of a Grand National now on his cv as well. Tiger Roll had already defied convention by managing to add a National Hunt Chase and a Cross Country Chase at the last couple of Festivals to his first win there in the Triumph Hurdle five years ago. He surprised everyone again, trainer Gordon Elliott included, when winning the Boyne Hurdle at Navan the other day at 25/1 in what had looked like being no more than a pipe-opener for another crack at the Cross Country.

#GreenCorner 🇮🇪

Our race replay of the day from the 2018 #CheltenhamFestival is #TigerRoll and @donoghue_keith in the Cross Country Chase.🙌

This win made it Tiger Roll's 3️⃣rd overall win at the festival, winning all three of these races on his birthday. 🥳🏇💪 pic.twitter.com/lZ2wgYzL5N

— Horse Racing Ireland (@GoRacing) 1 March 2019

A Gold Cup victory for Presenting Percy would be his third win at the Festival after landing the Pertemps Final in 2017 and last year’s RSA Chase. The RSA, the so-called ‘novices’ Gold Cup’, has a good record of supplying the winner of the real thing twelve months later, with Denman, Bobs Worth and Lord Windermere the most recent to complete the double and Might Bite going close to joining them last year. Also bidding for a hat-trick on Gold Cup day will be Pacha du Polder in the Foxhunter Chase, though history suggests he faces a stiffer task in his attempt to win the ‘amateurs’ Gold Cup’ for a third time; he became the ninth dual winner of the Foxhunter in the post-war era last year but none of his predecessors managed to add a third although most of them tried.