The Times
10.11.2026
Forget the guilt. For four stolen days indulge yourself with the delights, disaster and all-involving fascination that is the Cheltenham Festival.
Of course it is not the real world. Bad things are happening out there and I have a son and three grandchildren in the Gulf. But just for a while step into this one which at its heart has horses and people whose whole lives have been dedicated to the wonder that is winning at a sporting amphitheatre only rivalled in backdrop by Newlands in Cape Town with Table Mountain in relief.
“Location, location, location” should not only be an estate agents’ call. Come to Cheltenham and the town now sprawls out way beyond the Georgian splendour of the Pump Rooms and the Promenade all the way to the mysteries of GCHQ. But that is to the back of the racecourse. Climb the grandstand and you look across the green turf, dark birch fences and gleaming white rails up to Cleeve Hill, the highest point in the Cotswolds where our ancestors first camped 5,000 years and where a mere two centuries back crowds of 20,000 gathered for the races until the Reverend Francis Close, Cheltenham’s own “turbulent priest” got them banned for disorder before eventually being thwarted with a revival where we are now.
Come to Cheltenham and you do what Britain does best. Soak ourselves in the past but revel in the present and wake up everyday intent on the daily battle of hope against expectation. The Festival is both simple and impossible at once. Seven events a day in which the top English and Irish, and the odd French, jump horses vie for a place in the most coveted winners’ enclosure in the game. That’s the simple bit. Horses and riders putting everything on the line on this looping anvil of a track. But then comes the ever alluring, so often impossible: trying to solve the galloping jigsaw which every race presents and which for these last weeks and days so many people have had so many and so soon to be disabused opinions.
Walking the course yesterday afternoon was to have the mind flooded with both memories and speculation. This was the same track, the same hills, the same unforgiving climb to the winning line that I first rode on more than 60 years ago. But this is where tomorrow will start with an immediate resumption of Britain’s desperate defence against the forces of Willie Mullins and the other plundering Irish.
Time was when Britain when despite the successes of Irish legends Vincent O’Brien and Tom Dreaper we could be content in the knowledge that the Irish totals would not trouble double figures. Last year Mullins had 10 of his own but this time, ah this time, starting tomorrow. This time, as ever, we dream of adapting our own version of “Flower Of Scotland” and “send them back to think again.”
On this first day British trained horses are favourites for four of the seven races and fancied second best in the other three. Straightaway we have England’s record scorer Nicky Henderson fielding the hugely impressive Haydock and Cheltenham winner Old Park Star against an Irish attack headed by Joseph O’Brien’s Talk The Talk and a Willie Mullins/JP McManus runner called Mighty Park with a reputation almost as big as his size despite our only racecourse sighting was him lolloping around in front of what must have been one of the most uncompetitive hurdle races ever run.
There are whole bunch of others like Mydaddypaddy, El Cairos and Sober Glory who, as always with this Supreme Novices Hurdle, have hopes of being The Next Big Thing. Only one of them, if any, will prove to be and my advice is play each way on Somerset’s Sober Glory at 12-1.
Walk to the top of the hill and you would be struck by how much the ground had dried out. We have had such an unprecedentedly soggy winter that we forget how quickly grass sucks the water up in spring. This will be as completely different to the heavy ground many have been squelching round as today’s synthetic running tracks are from the crunching shale on which Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile at Oxford’s Iffley Road. In the Arkle Chase Kopek Des Bordes carries both favouritism and the Willie Mullins imprimatur for his attempt to follow last year’s victory in the Supreme Novices Hurdle. But it was officially “heavy” when he won last time at Leopardstown, it was his only public run over bigger obstacles, he wasn’t always foot perfect and although Wilie Mullins is a genius,13/8 are not odds I am playing with.
Nor do they for Henderson’s Lulamba, who looks securer although not always that bold in his jumping. There are only six runners in this Arkle but this will be a pace and a jumping test of a whole different order than anything any have faced before. It might just catch out the favourites and 14-1 for the still unbeaten Welsh trained Steel Ally might be more fun for your money.
So down the hill we come as I did, can it really be 57 years ago, still believing in the 1969 Champion Hurdle. But, as Constitution Hill is current testimony, the hurdles are there to be jumped and my horse Black Justice blundered badly and did well to get third behind the mighty Persian War. This year’s field is remarkable in having three mares amongst the leading fancies with last year’s winner, the Exmoor trained heroine Golden Ace, being the least favoured of them behind the Irish rivals Lossiemouth and Brighterdaysahead.
As with every race this week we can opine as much as we like and most opinions will be confounded. But I think the idea of this Champion Hurdle being a sorority will be upstaged by The New Lion who seems to have added extra speed to his stamina and can make it pay on what, this year, will be a 60 yard longer run-in.
In the wider world the future may be tough but faint hearts won’t get us anywhere. For a jockey before the start there is a “leave-the-earth” moment when you pull the goggles down over your eyes and your whole universe becomes the rolling, thundering, thrilling capsule of the race. For us followers there should be no shame this week in seeking that universe too.