Author: G C

After a flurry of activity at the end of the National Hunt season, notably the Cheltenham Festival in March and the Aintree Grand National Festival in April, by the time May rolls around it’s the turn of Flat racing aficionados to feel a little hot under the colour in anticipation of the first two Classic races of the season.

 

Currently sponsored by Qatari owned private investment company QIPCO, the Guineas Festival is staged annually, over a weekend in late April or early May, on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket Racecourse in Suffolk, in the East of England. The Guineas Festival features not only the 2,000 Guineas and the 1,000 Guineas – which, together with the Derby, Oaks and St.Leger, comprise the five British Classic races – but a full supporting card which, in 2018, was worth nearly £1.7 million in prize money.

 

The feature race on the Saturday, the 2,000 Guineas, is run over a straight mile and open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies. The race was first run in 1809, but wasn’t designated a “Classic” by the Jockey Club until five years later, shortly after the inaugural running of the 1,000 Guineas. The 2,000 Guineas took its name from its original prize fund, as did the 1,000 Guineas, but nowadays both races offer equal prize money of £500,000. The roll of honour for the 2,000 Guineas includes such luminaries as Brigadier Gerard (1972), Dancing Brave (1986), Sea The Stars (2009) and Frankel (2011), all of whom were rated 140+ by Timeform and can therefore be considered some of the greatest racehorses since that venerable institution published its first “Racehorses” annual, in 1948.

 

The feature race on the Sunday, the 1,000 Guineas, is run over the same course and distance as the 2,000 Guineas, but open to three-year-old thoroughbred fillies only. One of the most remarkable winners in the history of 1,000 Guineas was Sceptre who, in 1902, won the race 48 hours after winning the 2,000 Guineas and later finished fourth in the Derby before winning the Oaks and the St. Leger.

As the name suggests, the Bet365 Jump Finale is a single-day fixture that marks the end of the National Hunt season in Britain. The Bet365 Jump Finale is staged annually, in late April, at Sandown Park Racecourse in the town of Esher, in Surrey, in the South East of England. Inaugurated in 1957, as Whitbread Day, the fixture was commonly known by that title even after Whitbread Brewers withdrew their sponsorship in 2001, despite subsequently being sponsored by At The Races, Betfred and, most recently, Bet365. Until 2013, the Bet365 Jump Finale was a mixed-code meeting, featuring Flat and National Hunt racing on the same card but, since then, has exclusively featured National Hunt racing.

 

Bet365 Gold Cup, formerly the Whitbread Gold Cup, remains the highlight of the day. A Grade 3 handicap steeplechase, run over 3 miles 4 furlongs and 166 yards, open to horses aged five years and upwards and worth £150,000 in prize money, the Bet365 Gold Cup has traditionally been a difficult race in which to carry weight. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, just four horses – Puntal in 2004, Lacdoudal in 2006, Tidal Bay in 2012 and Hadrian’s Approach in 2014 – have carried 11 stone or more to victory in the race.

 

The supporting card for the Bet365 Jump Finale also includes the Bet365 Celebration Chase, run over 1 mile 7 furlongs and 119 yards, open to horses aged 5 years and upwards and elevated to Grade 1 status in 2014. Since then, its roll of honour has included Sire De Grugy (2014), Sprinter Sacre (2016) and Altior (2018), all of whom had won the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival the previous month. Of course, the final day of the National Hunt season is the day on which National Hunt Jockeys’ Championship and the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship are decided, so part of the celebrations at the Bet365 Jump Finale is the presentation of prizes to the respective winners.

To anyone connected, even loosely, with National Hunt racing, the Cheltenham Festival requires little introduction. The four-day extravaganza is staged annually, in March, at Cheltenham Racecourse, a.k.a. Prestbury Park, in Gloucestershire and is, undoubtedly, the most prestigious National Hunt event of the year. During the four days, most of the best National Hunt horses, from both sides of the Irish Sea, do battle for championship honours, not to mention over £4.5 million in prize money.

 

However, the Cheltenham Festival is not just a major horse racing occasion; it is, in fact, a British sporting institution and, arguably, the most famous Anglo-Irish sporting occasion of the year, attracting over 260,000 spectators – an average of over 60,000 a day – including 10,000 itinerant Irish racing fans. The Cheltenham Festival features a total of 28 races staged over four days, dubbed Champion Day, Ladies’ Day, St. Patrick’s Thursday – regardless of the actual date on which the Thursday falls – and Gold Cup Day.

 

The first two days, which feature the first two ‘championship’ races, the Champion Hurdle and the Queen Mother Champion Chase, respectively, are staged on the Old Course, while the last two, which feature the Stayers’ Hurdle and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, respectively, are staged on the New Course. Both courses are left-handed, undulating and testing in character, but the Old Course has a slightly shorter run-in and places emphasis on stamina than speed. The Cross Country Course, laid out in the centre of the two conventional courses, is used only for the running of the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase, currently scheduled for Ladies’ Day.

 

Aside from the four championship races, The Festival™ programme – the trademark is owned by Jockey Club Racecourses, which runs Cheltenham Racecourse – also includes nine more of the most prestigious type of race, known as Grade 1, in which the weight carried by each horse is determined by its age and sex, rather than its previous performances on the racecourse. These races are, in chronological order, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the Arkle Challenge Trophy, the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, the RSA Chase, the Weatherbys Champion Bumper, the Ryanair Chase, the Stayers’ Hurdle, the Triumph Hurdle and the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle.

The Welsh Grand National is a prestigious handicap steeplechase that has been run, over 3 miles 5½ furlongs, at Chepstow Racecourse in the Welsh border region, historically known as the Marches, since 1949. However, Wales’ most prestigious horse race was first run at Ely Racecourse in 1895 and, following the closure of that venue in 1939, run once at Caerleon Racecourse, in 1948, on its resumption following World War II, before being transferred permanently to Chepstow.

 

The Welsh Grand National has been sponsored by Coral since 1973 and in 2016, when Hennessy withdrew its sponsorship of the Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury, became the longest-running commercially sponsored steeplechase in National Hunt racing. The race is familiarly known as the “Coral Welsh Grand National.” The Welsh Grand National was awarded Grade 3 status when the National Hunt Pattern was overhauled by the Jockey Club in 1989.

 

Originally the highlight of a two-day fixture staged on Easter Monday and Tuesday, the Welsh Grand National was moved, notwithstanding the vagaries of the British winter, to February in 1969 and to late December a decade later. Nowadays, with total prize money of £150,000 the Welsh Grand National is the feature race of a single-day fixture scheduled annually for December 27. That said, in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2017 the original fixture was postponed because of snow and frost, or waterlogging, and the race was run in January of the following year.

 

The scheduling of the Welsh Grand National means that, almost invariably, the race is run under testing conditions but, rather than being just another slog in the mud, it is often an illuminative guide to major steeplechases later in the season, notably the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National proper. Future Cheltenham Gold Cup winners to have won the Welsh Grand National include Burrough Hill Lad, Synchronised and Native River, while Corbiere, Bindaree and Silver Birch tasted victory at Chepstow and at Aintree.