Which are the ‘feature’ races at the Cheltenham Festival?

The Cheltenham Festival is, of course, the flagship week in British National Hunt racing and, since 2005, has been a four-day extravanganza, nowadays featuring 28 quintessential races across every discipline of the sport. Half of those races are Grade 1 races, in which horses compete off level weights, subject to allowances for age and gender, but at least one of the so-called ‘feature’ races forms the highlight of each day.

Traditionally, the four feature races are the Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase, Stayers’ Hurdle and Cheltenham Gold Cup, but it would be fair to say that the Festival Trophy, or Ryanair Chase, which was introduced in 2005 and promoted to Grade 1 status in 2008, now rivals the Stayers’ Hurdle for top billing on the third day of the Cheltenham Festival.

The oldest, most valuable and, by far, most prestigious of the quintet is the Cheltenham Gold Cup, run over three miles and two and a half furlongs on the New Course on the final day. Nowadays worth £625,000 in prize money, the race has been won by some of the finest steeplechasers in history. Second billing goes to the two-mile hurdling championship, the Champion Hurdle, which was established just three years after the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 1927, and is run on the Old Course on the opening day. Arguably slightly further down the pecking order come the two-mile chasing championship, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the three-mile hurdling championship, the Stayers’ Hurdle, and the aforementioned Ryanair Chase, which is run over the ‘intermediate’ distance of two miles and four and a half furlongs.

Leave a Reply