Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle

Run over an advertised distance of three miles on the New Course at Cheltenham, the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle is currently scheduled as the fourth race on the fourth and final day of the Cheltenham Festival, where it serves as an aperitif for the dish of the day, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Officially registered as the Spa Novices’ Novices’ hurdle, the race is, nonetheless, a prestigious and valuable Grade 1 contest in its own right, worth £147,555 in total prize money at the last count.

Nowadays – that is, since 2023 – open to novice hurdlers aged five years and upwards, the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle was introduced, as the Grade 2 Brit Insurance Novices’ Hurdle, when the Cheltenham Festival was extended from three days to four in 2005. ‘The Potato People’ took over the sponsorship three years later, at which point the race was upgraded to its current Grade 1 status.

As is oft the case at the Cheltenham Festival, Willie Mullins is the leading trainer in the relatively short history of the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, having saddled Penhill (2017), Monkfish (2020), The Nice Guy (2022) and Jasmin De Vaux (2025). Mullins’ stable jockey Paul Townend rode all bar The Nice Guy (having opted for better-fancied stable companion Minella Cocooner, who finished second, on that occasion) and is, jointly, the leading jockey, alongside Sir Anthony McCoy.

Mullins’ most recent winner, Jasmin De Vaux, was, in fact, winning at the Cheltenham Festival for the second year running, having won the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 2024. The most notable winner of the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, so far, though, was the 2011 winner, Bobs Worth, trained by Nicky Henderson, who went on to win the RSA Chase in 2012 and completed a Festival hat-trick in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2013.