Hold your horses Ireland, Britain's jump racing half-term report looks promising with Cheltenham on horizon
Grey Year's Dawn Chase Novices' This Skelton Delight: Winning Harry The Dawning Cheltenham Turners At Board On Festival
The busiest day in the racing calendar next week, with eight St Stephen's Day Day meetings dotted around Britain, also marks the effective mid-point of the National Hunt season, and the half-term report on the 2024-25 campaign offers several reasons for British jumps racing to head into the new year in a generally positive frame of mind.
Jumping returned to Windsor on Sunday for the first time since 2005, and the track will join nearby Ascot in staging the 'Winter Million' over three days next month. The best riders, meanwhile, have a new £500,000 prize to aim for – the rough equivalent of 10 Grand National wins at once – in the David Power Jockeys’ Cup, and while Harry Skelton has a healthy early lead, the points-based scoring system should ensure that it is still a live contest – and betting heat – at least until Cheltenham’s festival in March.
That, in turn, should provide a compelling narrative for at least one episode of the second season of ITV1's fly-on-the-wall documentary Champions: Full Gallop, which has yet to be formally announced but is, according to industry insiders, already a done deal with filming under way.
There is even a British-trained favourite for next week’s King George VI Chase in Dan Skelton’s Grey Dawning, who was initially thought to be a big doubt for Kempton after a gruelling comeback in the Betfair Chase at Haydock but has left the trainer 'genuinely surprised' by how swiftly he he recovered. And unless or until we hear otherwise, Constitution Hill, the unbeaten 2023 Champion Hurdle winner, apparently remains on course for the Christmas Hurdle on the King George card.
Having endured an almighty thrashing by the Irish at both Cheltenham and Aintree in the spring, which culminated in Willie Mullins adding a first British National Hunt trainers’ championship to his 18th title in Ireland, these are all healthy indicators for the domestic jumps industry.
As with all decent half-term reports, however, there is still room for improvement in the second half of the campaign. The focus, inevitably, will soon turn towards Cheltenham’s festival meeting in March, and the track’s attempts to reverse the sharp drops in attendance over the last two years.
Many and varied reasons have been advanced for the sudden decline in the festival’s popularity, for its live audience at least, including an increasing sense of predictability as Irish-trained runners carried all before them, and the increasing cost of the Cheltenham experience in terms of ticket prices, food and drink at the track and the spiralling cost of accommodation within striking distance of the course.
The track duly announced a series of changes to the racing programme in September, including the unexpected axing of one of its Grade One event, alongside initiatives to improve the overall “customer experience”.
The full impact of their efforts is likely to become clear only after the last runner has crossed the line on March 14 and the accountants get to work, but in addition to freezing ticket prices at 2024 levels, the course has also introduced a scheme that offers anyone buying a ticket for one of the four days of the festival a 20% discount on any other afternoon bar Gold Cup day.
The likely makeup of the fields for the meeting’s showpiece events will become much more apparent after the Christmas festivals, when Grey Dawning could easily emerge as a very live contender for the Gold Cup and Constitution Hill might re-establish himself as the horse to beat over hurdles.
Even at this early stage, though, and whether or not you get 20% off, a ticket for Wednesday’s Champion Chase card looks like a steal. The second day has suffered the most alarming attendance decline of all, with a 27% drop between 2022 and 2024, but with the hugely popular (and British-trained) Jonbon currently heading the market from Gaelic Warrior, last year’s Arkle Trophy winner, and Energumene, the champion two-miler in 2022 and 2023, its feature event could well be the race of the meeting.
That should give Cheltenham’s finely honed marketing team plenty to work with and anyone buying a ticket for either Tuesday or Thursday in particular should be seriously tempted to make it a two-day trip to the West Country. The first half of the National Hunt season has offered some serious cause for optimism, and once the festive programme is in the book, it will be time for Cheltenham to grab the baton.