Henrietta Knight

In November 2023, Henrietta Knight announced that, after an 11-year hiatus, she would be returning to training at West Lockinge, near Wantage, Oxfordshire, from whence she had previously sent out over 700 winners. She duly enjoyed her first winner since returning to the training ranks, Motazzen, in a handicap hurdle at Fontwell on December 10, 2024.

Formerly a successful point-to-point trainer, Knight first began training under Rules in 1989. Nowadays, she is assisted by former Grand National winning-jockey Brendan Powell Snr. (also a highly successful trainer in his own right), but was previously assisted by her late husband, Terry Biddlecombe, whom she married in 1995. Champion National Hunt Jockey in 1965, 1966 and 1969, Biddlecombe suffered a stroke in October 2011 and Knight handed in her licence to take care of him.

Biddlecombe died in January 2014 but, during their time together, the original ‘odd’ couple enjoyed numerous high-profile successes. Most notable of their achievements was their handling of Best Mate, owned by Jim Lewis, whom they saddled to win 14 of his 22 races between November 1999 and November 2005, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup three years running in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Indeed, ahead of her return to training, Knight said, “Cheltenham’s where I love and I can’t wait to get back there. The emphasis will be on trying to find a few chasers to take me back to Cheltenham.”

Now 78, it remains to be seen if Knight can hit her previous heights at the Cheltenham Festival, where, Best Mate aside, she has a handful of winners to her name. Another horse owned by Jim Lewis, Edredon Bleu, added two to her career tally, courtesy of victories in the Grand Annual Chase in 1998 and the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2000, on both occasions under A.P. McCoy. She also won the Stayers’ Hurdle with Karshi in 1997 and the Royal & SunAlliance Chase with Lord Noelie in 2000.

Willie Mullins

Given the dominance of Irish trainers at the Cheltenham Festival in the last decade or so, it is nigh on impossible to refer to the biggest four days of the jumps season without mentioning Willie Mullins. Based in Closutton, Muine Bheag, County Carlow, Mullins enjoys the patronage of most of the leading owners in Ireland, in some cases exclusively, and it is no real surprise that he has been the perennial champion trainer in the Emerald Isle since 2008.

March 14, 2025 – which, coincidentally, is Cheltenham Gold Cup Day – marks the thirtieth anniversary of Mullins’ first winner at the Cheltenham Festival, Tourist Attraction, ridden by Mark Dwyer, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. The Master of Closutton has long since become the force majeure at ‘The Olympics of Horse Racing’; on March 13, 2024, Mullins reached the landmark of 100 Festival winners when Jasmin De Vaux, ridden, fittingly, by his son and assitant trainer, Patrick, won the Weatherbys Champion Bumper . He subsequently saddled two more winners, Absurde in the County Hurdle and Galopin Des Champs in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, to take his career total to 103.

Galopin Des Champs was, of course, defending his Gold Cup title and took Mullins’ tally in the ‘Blue Riband’ event to four, after another back-to-back winner, Al Boum Photo, in 2019 and 2020. Mullins has won the Champion Hurdle five times, with Hurricane Fly (2011 and 2013), Faugheen (2015), Annie Power (2016) and State Man (2024), the Queen Mother Champion Chase twice, with Energumene (2022 and 2023), and the Stayers’ Hurdle twice, with Nichols Canyon (2017) and Penhill (2018). He has also farmed several other races, not least the aforementioned Weatherbys Champion Bumper, in which he has saddled an eye-watering 13 winners down the years, and the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and County Handicap Hurdle, in which he has saddled seven winners apiece.