The first three days of this year’s Cheltenham Festival have been a slightly more difficult sell than normal, but it is certain to be a sell‑out when National Hunt fans gather to mark a significant birthday at the foot of Cleeve Hill on Friday.
The Gold Cup was not the most important race at Cheltenham when it was first staged in 1924, an era when the National Hunt Chase, which survives to this day on the Festival’s opening afternoon, was second only to the Grand National at Aintree in terms of its prestige. But a century on from Red Splash’s victory in the first Gold Cup – a last-gasp win by a head and a neck that set a suitably high standard for the decades ahead – the race is the ultimate, undisputed test of steeplechasing’s champions.
