An abiding personal memory of the Cheltenham Festival is the sound of almost complete silence after the 1990 Gold Cup. Sixty-thousand racegoers slowly absorbed the fact that Norton’s Coin, a 100-1 shot saddled by a Welsh dairy farmer who trained a few jumpers as a hobby, had just beaten the country’s most popular chaser, Desert Orchid.
Sirrell Griffiths’s win with Norton’s Coin remains the biggest upset at the Festival, not just in the Gold Cup, but in any race. When set against some of the likely outcomes at next week’s Festival – when Willie Mullins is 1-7 to be the leading trainer and the Irish range from 1-9 to 1-25 to have the most winners – there is a distinct sense it belongs to a different age, in fact, almost a different sport.
Mullins’s near-total dominance at the meeting over the past decade is, inevitably, a major factor, but the Festival does not feel quite so unpredictable as it once did. If Mullins does not win, then Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead or Nicky Henderson probably will.
The hunter chase is now the only race when a permit holder like Griffiths can stand any realistic chance of success and even that succumbed to the Mullins machine 12 months ago. Billaway, the 13-8 favourite with Patrick Mullins, the trainer’s son, in the saddle, was one of 11 favourites to win over the four days of the meeting, while Constitution Hill, the Supreme Novice Hurdle winner, was joint-favourite at 9-4. Three second-favourites won, at odds of 6-5, 2-1 and 5-2,with 15 of the 28 races won by a runner at 11-4 or shorter.
The meeting’s handicaps have also been going the punter’s way in recent seasons. Over the past five years, a level bet on every handicap favourite would have returned a profit of nearly 10% and that despite a relative lean year in 2022 when one went in – State Man, a subsequent multiple Grade One winner racing off an opening mark of 141 in the County Hurdle.
Perhaps a little less uncertainty is only to be expected given the transformation of the Festival over the past 30 years. Prize money and the demand for Festival success has vastly improved the quality of the horses taking part and the very best of them increasingly find their way to a small cohort of immensely powerful and talented trainers.
Ayr 1.30 Fortcanyon (nap) 2.00 Dedanser 2.35 Ultra Violet 3.10 Without Conviction 3.45 Bellany Lord 4.20 Ruby Island 4.55 Out On The Tear
Wolverhampton 1.40 Dapper Man 2.10 High Ovation 2.45 Think Champagne 3.20 Quick Change 3.55 Twistaline 4.25 City Escape
Exeter 1.50 Impose Toi 2.25 West Orchard 3.00 Iberio 3.35 Red Dirt Road 4.10 Seymour Promise 4.40 Mutual Respect (nb)
Leicester 2.15 Stormin Crossgales 2.50 First Angel 3.25 Pawpaw 4.00 Doctor Ken 4.30 Big Changes 5.05 Fier Jaguen
Kempton 6.00 The Green Man 6.30 Nuthatch 7.00 High Court Judge 7.30 In The Giving 8.00 Sword Beach 8.30 Swiss Rowe
Training facilities, such as all-weather gallops, have also improved immeasurably across the board, while horses that have a light campaign with the Festival in mind are more likely to make it to the meeting and more likely to run up to their best form if they do.
In other words, the slow but steady squeezing-out of smaller National Hunt stables from the season’s biggest meeting may also have removed a little of the randomness. Though many longstanding Festival-goers may see this as a cause for regret, it is simply a consequence of the meeting’s rapid climb into the premier league of Britain’s major sporting events.
It is not as if big-priced winners have vanished. Jeff Kidder, the 80-1 Juvenile Handicap Hurdle winner in 2021, was the highest-priced Festival winner since Norton’s Coin, while even Mullins has sent out a 50-1 winner in recent memory when Eglantine Du Seuil edged out her stable companion Concertista – a 66-1 shot – in the mares’ novice hurdle four years ago.
It could be argued that any reduction in the overall competitiveness of Festival racing is not in the long-term interests of either the meeting or racing as a whole, since all but a handful of the 28 races feature among the top 50 of the year for betting turnover. The Levy on off-course bets, after all, is based on bookies’ profits, which inevitably take a hit if there is a run of winning favourites at the Festival.
The Levy, though, is increasingly less significant than media rights revenue from online betting, which is based on turnover, not profits, and nothing boosts turnover like a run of well-backed winners as punters on a roll continue to play up their winnings.
So while the Festival might feel a little more predictable – and in some senses it certainly is – that is not necessarily a cause for concern. You can still be fairly sure that there will be at least one winner at 33-1 or above next week and a betting day to remember for ever if you manage to sniff it out.
