How Cheltenham Reaches a Screen-First Racing Audience

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Not every Cheltenham supporter can spend four days at Prestbury Park. Some follow the festival from work, others watch from abroad, and plenty keep one eye on the racing while travelling. A phone cannot reproduce the roar before the opening race, but it can now provide almost everything else a follower needs.

Race times, declarations, results, commentary, and highlights are available throughout the day. That makes the Festival easier to follow, but it also creates a challenge: there is more information than most people can sensibly read between races. The best digital coverage keeps the important details easy to find.

Schedules Still Come First

The starting point remains the race schedule. Cheltenham stages seven races on each of its four days, so even regular followers need a reliable guide to times, distances, and race types. A clear schedule is especially useful when meetings change, races are delayed, or a supporter wants to plan around one of the championship events.

The Cheltenham Festival schedule brings those details together in one place. On a mobile screen, a straightforward table is often more useful than a long preview because it answers the immediate questions: what is next, when does it start and what kind of race is it?

Alerts Fill the Gaps Between Live Pictures

Live television remains the best option away from the course, but supporters cannot always watch every minute. Alerts can confirm a result, flag a non-runner or remind someone that the next race is approaching. Text commentary adds enough detail to follow the closing stages when video is unavailable.

This way of organising information is familiar across online entertainment. News apps separate breaking alerts from background reports, sports services place scores beside commentary, and online casinos divide games into clear lobby categories so users can move quickly between different formats. For Cheltenham coverage, the useful lesson is simple: show the next race and latest result first, then leave form, statistics, and longer analysis one tap away.

Results Need More Than the Winner’s Name

A quick alert tells a supporter who won, but a complete result should also show the placed horses, starting prices, and finishing margins. Those details explain whether a favourite justified support, an outsider caused an upset, or a close finish deserves another look.

Results pages also become part of the Festival’s record. The official history of Cheltenham Racecourse stretches back to organised racing in the town in the early nineteenth century. Digital archives make more of that history searchable, allowing supporters to compare a current winner with horses, jockeys, and trainers from previous meetings.

The Racecourse Still Supplies the Story

Phones have changed how quickly Festival information travels, not where the drama comes from. The key moments still happen on the Old Course, New Course, and Cross-Country Course. Digital coverage works best when it helps supporters understand those moments without getting in their way.

A well-timed alert can bring someone back for the next race. A clear result can settle an argument about the places. A concise report can explain how the winner did it. None replaces being there, but together they allow far more people to follow Cheltenham from the first race on Tuesday to the final event on Gold Cup Day.

 

 

Susannah Ricci

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The owner of Yotes Court Vineyard, near Maidstone, Kent, Susannah Ricci is the wife of banker Richard ‘Rich’ Ricci, alongside whom she has been a high-profile National Hunt owner since 2005. The majority of her horses are trained in Ireland, by Willie Mullins, but she also has some with Alan King and Venetia Williams in Britain.

As far as the Cheltenham Festival is concerned, Ricci first tasted victory with Mikael D’Haguenet, trained by Mullins and ridden by Ruby Walsh, in the Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle in 2009. Her now-familiar green and pink silks have since been carried to victory, at the time of writing, another 24 times at the March showpiece meeting. Ricci has a particularly good record in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle and Champion Hurdle, each of which she has won three times.

In recent seasons, just two Ricci-owned horses have been responsible for six Cheltenham Festival victories between them. The Great Pretender mare Lossiemouth won the Triumph Hurdle in 2023, back-to-back renewals of the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle in 2024 and 2025 and the Champion Hurdle in 2026, while the Maxios gelding Gaelic Warrior won the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 2025 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2026, thereby completing a notable feature-race double for his owner.

Ricci had previously won the Champion Hurdle twice before, with Faugheen (2015) and Annie Power (2016), and the Arkle Challenge Trophy once before, with Douvan (2016). Of the remaining feature races at the Festival, Ricci has also won the Ryanair Chase twice, with Vautour (2016) and Min (2020). Six times a Grade 1 winner over fences in Ireland, Chacun Pour Soi was sent off as odds-on favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2021, but found little on the run-in and eventually finished third, beaten a length and a half by the winner, Put The Kettle On.

Mark Walsh

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Until the end of the 2025/26 National Hunt season, when he was replaced by Harry Cobden, Mark Walsh held the enviable position of retained jockey the leading owner John ‘J.P’ McManus on both sides of the Irish Sea. On British soil, Kildare-born Walsh took over from Barry Geraghty in the role following his retirement on July 11, 2020 but, by that stage, he had already ridden four winners at the Cheltenham Festival.

Walsh opened his Festival account on Bleu Berry, owned by Luke McMahon and trained by Willie Mullins, in the Coral Cup Handicap Hurdle in 2018. The following year, he added two more Festival winners to his career tally, notably guiding Espoir D’Allen, owned by McManus and trained by Gavin Cromwell, to an impressive, 15-length win in the Champion Hurdle. A year later still, Walsh rode Aramax, owned by McManus and trained by Gordon Elliott, to victory in the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle and, since succeeding Geraghty, has won the same race another three times, courtesy of Brazil (2022), Puturhandstogether (2025) and Saratoga (2026).

All told, at the time of writing, Walsh has ridden a career total 16 Cheltenham Festival winners. Espoir D’Allen aside, highlights include winning the Stayers’ Hurdle on Sire Du Berlais, trained by Elliott, in 2023, the Ryanair Chase on Fact To File, trained by Willie Mullins, in 2025 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Inothewayurthinkin, trained by Cromwell, also in 2025.

Inothewayurthinkin was supplemented for the Cheltenham Gold Cup by McManus, at a cost of £25,000, and duly foiled the hat-trick attempt of odds-on favourite Galopin Des Champs, trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Paul Townend, winning readily by six lengths. Walsh said later, “I didn’t want to take him [Galopin Des Champs] on too early, because we all know how he stays up the hill, but my lad just carried me there and winged the second-last and went by him, so I just kept kicking because my lad stays all day as well.”

Cheltenham Festival 2013

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The 2013 Cheltenham Festival was staged between Tuesday, March 12 and Friday, March 15, 2013, but the start of racing on the opening day was delayed by 35 minutes due to overnight frost and the Cross Country Chase was postponed by 48 hours, leaving six, rather than seven, races on day one. Following the British domination in 2012, Irish trainers redressed the balance, to some extent, with victory for Alderwood, trained by Willie Mullins, in the closing Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase, making the final score 14-13 in favour of the home team.

Indeed, Mullins, who saddled five winners during the four days, wrested the leading trainer award back from Nicky Henderson and Ruby Walsh, who rode four, did likewise with the leading jockey award from Barry Geraghty. Nevertheless, Henderson enjoyed a fine Festival, with four winners, including Sprinter Sacre in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and Bobs Worth in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, both ridden by Geraghty.

Of the other three ‘feature’ races, the Champion Hurdle, the Ryanair Chase and the World Hurdle, two went to Ireland. Hurricane Fly, trained by Mullins and ridden by Walsh, regained the two-mile hurdling championship, having finished third, as defending champion, in 2012, while Solwhit, trained by Charles Byrnes and ridden by Paul Carberry, won the World Hurdle. In between times, Cue Card, trained by Colin Tizzard and ridden by his son, Joe, struck a blow for Britain with a commanding nine-length victory over the Irish-trained favourite, First Lieutenant, in the Ryanair Chase.

Tragically, the 2012 Cheltenham Festival, as a whole, was overshadowed by serious injury to leading Irish amateur jockey John Thomas ‘J.T.’ McNamara. McNamara fractured two vertebrae in his neck in a horrific first-fence fall from Galaxy Rock in the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup, which left him paralysed from the neck down. He did on July 26, 2016, aged just 41, after suffering complications.

Cheltenham Festival 2012

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The 2012 Cheltenham Festival was staged, as is customary, between Tuesday, March 13 to Friday, March 16, 2012 and was notable for the dominance of British-trained horses. The for-once-not-all-conquering Willie Mullins saddled three winners, his brother, Thomas, saddled one, as did Rodger Sweeney, but all the other races, including the five ‘feature’ races, went the way of horses trained on British soil, making the final score 22-5 in favour of the home team. Nicky Henderson was the leading trainer, with seven winners over the four days, and Barry Geraghty was the leading jockey, with five.

Rock On Ruby, trained by Paul Nicholls and ridden by Noel Fehily, sprang a minor surprise in the Champion Hurdle, beating defending champion, and odds-on favourite, Hurricane Fly into third place. Finian’s Rainbow, trained by Henderson and ridden by Geraghty, won the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Riverside Theatre, for the same trainer/jockey combination, justified favouritism in the Ryanair Chase and Big Buck’s, trained by Nicholls and ridden by Ruby Walsh won the World Hurdle for the fourth year running.

In the ‘Blue Riband’ event, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, previous dual winner Kauto Star – making what turned out to be his last appearance at the Festival, as a 12-year-old – was pulled up before halfway. In his absence, victory went to the ill-fated Synchronised, trained by Jonjo O’Neill and ridden by Tony McCoy, who kept on gamely in the closing stages to beat The Giant Bolster and defending champion, Long Run, by two-and-a-quarter lengths and three-quarters of a length. Tragically, less than a month later, the nine-year-old was fatally injured after falling in the Grand National, as he attempted to become the first horse since the legendary Golden Miller to win both the premier steeplechases in the country in the same season.

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