Cheltenham Festival© Photo Healy Racing
With a cohort of racing fans once again calling for Cheltenham to return to a three day Festival I thought it might be a bit of fun to take a break from all the form study and look back at what Cheltenham was really like when the Festival was done and dusted by Thursday afternoon.
The last time Cheltenham had a three day festival was way back in 2004. It was the same month the smoking ban came into force in Ireland and self-confessed punter Bertie Ahern was Taoiseach. It was also a time when Irish racing had plenty of friends in high places with Charlie McCreevy the Minister for Finance and Joe Walsh the Minister for Agriculture.
The 2004 Festival saw Paul Nicholls (4 wins) train as many winners as all the Irish-trainers combined. Willie Mullins on the other hand could only muster one winner across the week. 25/1 chance Rule Supreme, ridden by David Casey in the Sun Alliance Novice Chase, was his only victory that year. I don’t think twenty years ago anyone could have foreseen the shift in those two trainers' Cheltenham fortunes.
Brave Inca was sent off the 7/2 favourite to win the 19-runner Letheby & Christopher sponsored Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and Hardy Eustace caused a shock when landing the Smurfit Champion Hurdle at odds of 33/1 from 11/8 favourite Rooster Booster in a 14-runner renewal.
In 2004 there were only two single figure fields across the three days, an 8-runner Champion Chase and a 7-runner Cathcart Cup. Moscow Flyer (5/6 fav when unseating in the Champion Chase) and Best Mate (8/11 fav when landing his third Gold Cup in a row) were the only odds-on shots of the week.
Best Mate won £203,000 for connections when landing the Gold Cup that year. By comparison, this year's winner will scoop £352,000.
Jim Culloty not only rode his third Gold Cup winner that year, but also landed the Champion Bumper for good measure aboard Tom Cooper’s Total Enjoyment. Ten years later in 2014 Culloty trained Lord Windermere to win the Gold Cup, but stopped training just four years after that.
Fast Forward to 2024 and the Cheltenham Festival is a completely different proposition these days. The pendulum has obviously swung hugely in favour of Irish-trained horses in recent years, but the breeding profile of the winners is also vastly different now.
In 2004 Irish-bred horses (11 wins) dominated the Festival winning over half the races. There were 3 British-bred winners and only 2 from France, but there was also a spread of other countries represented, with winners bred in Japan, New Zealand and Germany.
France has become a far more dominant source of Cheltenham winners over the intervening years and last year, for the first time ever, French-bred winners outnumbered Irish-bred winners at the Festival.
This week’s Festival sees French-bred favourites for all the big races - Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, Ryanair Chase, Stayers Hurdle and Gold Cup. There will also be no Irish-bred runner in Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle, which must be a first.
This time last year there was kite-flying about extending the Festival to a fifth day. Now a return to a three-day Festival is beginning to look like it could be back on the agenda.
A straight switch back to the 2004 Cheltenham format would be a retrograde step in my opinion. The Mares programme of races that have been introduced to Cheltenham have brought far more benefits than issues regarding the overall competitiveness of the Festival.
There has been some grumbling about Lossiemouth swerving Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle for the Mares option on the same day, but without these mares races Lossiemouth would probably still be wandering around a field in France and we might never have had the pleasure of witnessing the talents of Quevega, Annie Power or Honeysuckle. The likes of Mystical Power and Facile Vega most likely wouldn’t exist only for the mares programme.
Lossiemouth comes to Cheltenham this week with only one run under her belt out of the juvenile ranks. With a bit of luck she’ll have plenty more opportunities to take on the big boys.
One area where a three-day Festival outweighed the current four-day format was with regards to the Novices’ races. It cannot be denied that the introduction of interim distance novice hurdles and novice chases has watered down the competitiveness of the individual races in these divisions.
Culling the middle distance Gallagher Novices Hurdle and Turners Novices Chase from the schedule would probably pacify the purists, but is that really necessary? As long as the Championship races continue to attract the best horses I don’t think it matters too much what happens among the novice ranks.
British racing certainly has lots of problems to deal with at the moment, but I’m not sure that Cheltenham is necessarily one of them. It may not be perfect, but it’s still the best four days of entertainment for me each year.
As the action draws ever closer I must say I’m as eagerly anticipating the 2024 Festival as I was way back in 2004 and once again have myself convinced this will be the year I beat the bookies.
