Most people who keep horses can judge a field by pressing a boot heel into the turf. Until 2007, racecourse clerks often judged the going in much the same way, with a heel or the end of a walking stick, and at Cheltenham in March that judgement could shape a whole week of racing.
The Festival is the high point of the jump racing season in Britain and Ireland. For four days the best hurdlers and chasers from both countries meet at one racecourse, and a single championship race can define a horse’s career.
A History Older Than the Festival
Racing at Cheltenham goes back to 1815, when the first organised Flat meeting was held on Nottingham Hill. The sport had a difficult start in the town. In 1829 the Reverend Francis Close preached against it, the 1830 meeting was disrupted, and the grandstand was burnt down before the next one. Racing first moved to Prestbury Park in 1831.
The meeting now known as the Festival was first held on the current site in 1902 and grew to four days in 2005. In 2001 it was lost altogether. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease at Woolstone, about five miles away, put the course inside an infected area, and the rescheduled April dates were called off. Anyone who kept horses through the movement restrictions of that year will remember how far they reached.
The Races That Define the Festival
Cheltenham has two main courses, and the Festival uses both. The Old Course hosts the first two days, including the Champion Hurdle and the Queen Mother Champion Chase, both run over about two miles. The New Course takes over for the last two days, with the Stayers’ Hurdle over about three miles and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the meeting’s best-known race.
The difference between the two tracks is greater than it sounds. The former jockey Aidan Coleman has described the Old Course as “tighter”, with more time spent on the turn, and said the two tracks “might as well be in different countries”. On the New Course the hurdles track has only two flights in the last six furlongs, which puts more emphasis on stamina.
What Separates the Contenders
Form matters, but Cheltenham asks its own questions. The course is left-handed and undulating, the fences are stiff, and the last half mile is uphill. A horse needs to jump soundly and stay the trip as well as have speed, which is why a good run at a previous Festival is often taken as the best guide. Condition counts too. Trainers keep a close eye on weight and fitness through the winter, much as World Horse Welfare has been encouraging owners on livery yards to do with routine weight checks.
Welfare rules have also changed. After a review of the 2018 Festival, the British Horseracing Authority extended pre-race veterinary checks to every runner and cut the maximum field in two-mile chases from 24 to 20. The review found that Festival races between 2007 and 2018 had 5,451 runners and 308 fallers, roughly one in eighteen. Since March 2022, obstacles on British jump courses have been marked in white rather than orange, following University of Exeter research into how horses see.
Understanding the Favourites and Betting Odds
Ground is one of the biggest unknowns going into the week. Since January 2009, racecourses have had to publish a GoingStick reading when runners are declared and again on race day, alongside the official going description, and Cheltenham waters the track when the run-up to March is dry.
Race previews pay close attention to those readings. A horse that needs soft ground can drift in the Cheltenham betting odds if the course dries out, while one that prefers a sound surface can shorten. Plenty of favourites are still beaten. The climb to the line comes at the end of a long, testing race, and a horse running at Cheltenham for the first time can find it harder than its form elsewhere suggests. Less fancied horses that handle the undulations well can run far better than expected, which is part of what keeps the championship races open.
Why Cheltenham Continues to Matter
The crowds show how much the meeting means. A record 280,627 people attended over the four days in 2022, and organisers cut capacity on Thursday and Friday by 5,000 the following year. The build-up has already begun. The November Meeting in mid-November is run on the Old Course and the Cross Country course, a twisting circuit of banks, ditches and rails found nowhere else in Britain, and it gives trainers an early look at how some of their Festival hopes cope with the hill.