Festival Hunters’ Chase

The Festival Hunters’ Chase has been sponsored by wealth management firm St. James’s Place since 2016 and is nowadays run, for sponsorship purposes, as the St. James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase. The race is run over three miles and two-and-a-half furlongs on the New Course at Cheltenham, the same course and distance as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, which it immediately succeeds as the penultimate race on the fourth and final day of the Cheltenham Festival.

Unlike the Cheltenham Gold Cup, though, it is restricted exclusively to amateur jockeys. Professional jockeys did compete in 2021, but only because their amateur counterparts were prohibited from doing so by Covid-19 regulations. It is also worth noting that the total prize money for the Festival Hunters’ Chase, £50,000, is just 8% of the £625,000 available in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. No horse has ever won both races, but the 1951 winner, Halloween, finished in the first three in the Cheltenham Gold Cup four years running, in 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956. Of course, the 1981 winner, Grittar, famously won the Grand National at Aintree in 1982 under 48-year-old amateur Dick Saunders.

A total of nine horses have won the Festival Hunters’ Chase twice, the most recent being Pacha Du Polder, trained by Paul Nicholls, who recorded back-to-back victories in 2017 and 2018. Nicholls is, in fact, jointly the leading trainer in the history of the race, having also saddled Earthmover (2004) and Sleeping Night (2005) to victory. Nicholls shares that accolade with the late Richard Barber, brother of his landlord, Paul Barber, who was responsible for Rushing Wild (1992), Fantus (1995 and 1997) and Earthmover (1998).