Cheltenham Festival 2021
The previous years Cheltenham Festival, which concluded on March 13, 2020, was the last major sporting event to be staged in the United Kingdom before the first national lockdown due to Covid-19. With a further national lockdown in England taking legal effect on January 5, 2021, the 2021 Cheltenham took place behind closed doors, with no owners or spectators admitted to the course.
Spectators or not, at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival the week belonged to the Irish, who won the Prestbury Cup by an eye-watering 23-5 in what was dubbed a ‘greenwash’ by the popular press. Uniquely, Henry de Bromhead won the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase and Cheltenham Gold Cup. His stable jockey, the trailblazing Rachael Blackmore, started the week by becoming the first woman to win the Champion Hurdle and, a further five winners later, ended it by becoming the first woman to win the Ruby Walsh Trophy, presented to the leading jockey at the meeting.
Rachael Blackmore also finished second in the Cheltenham Gold Cup on A Plus Tard, trained by Henry de Bromhead. The race was won by his lesser-fancied stable companion Minella Indo, ridden by Jack Kennedy, who led over the final fence and was always holding the runner-up, eventually winning by a length and a quarter. The 2019 and 2020 winner, Al Boum Photo, again ran well in third place, five and a half lengths behind the winner and the first three finished 24 lengths clear of the 2018 winner, Native River.
Following the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Henry de Bromhead, with six winners, look destined to win the leading trainer award for the first time in his career. However, in the last three races of the meeting, Willie Mullins saddled Billaway to finish second in the St. James’s Place Hunters’ Chase, Colreevy and Elimay to fill the first two places in the Liberthine Mares’ Chase and Galopin Des Champs to win the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle. He, too, finished the meeting with six winners and wrested the trainers’ title from the County Waterford man by virtue of having saddled more placed horses during the week.