Cheltenham Festival 2024

2024 Cheltenham Festival

The Cheltenham Festival is the highlight of the jumps season and the pinnacle of National Hunt racing. Spread over four days, and a total of twenty-eight races, the Cheltenham Festival is the centre stage for the highest quality of horse either side of the Irish sea, and a healthy rivalry between the Irish and British gave birth to the Prestbury Cup, a trophy to the team with the most winners during the week.

Here you will find everything you need for the Cheltenham Festival. Read all racecards for every race across all four days, read out runner by runner previews for all the big races, and place your bets directly by clicking the odds buttons. You’ll also find the latest news and expert tips for the week, all in one place.

Photograph by Grossick Racing Photography

Tuesday 12th March

Tuesday is Champion Hurdle day and arguably the best day of the week. Constitution Hill was a hugely convincing winner of the 2023 renewal of the feature race, a win that took his tally at the course and festival to 2 wins from 2 after his complete domination in Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in the previous year. Nicky Henderson recorded his ninth win in the Champion Hurdle last year and time will tell if he’ll bid to extend that impressive sequence with his massively exciting champion or a season over fences is in the offing.

The meeting opens with the aforementioned Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, a contest that tends to be a strong guide to future stars. Willie Mullins holds the record for training the most winners of the race, mopping up five of the last eleven, taking his total to seven. He again looks likely to hold a strong hand in the race with several horses to choose from and will no doubt be keen to get back on track after only managing a second place in last year’s contest. The Arkle and the Ultima figure over the bigger fences before the Mares Hurdle which promises to be a hugely competitive renewal.

Races on Champions Day

Supreme Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Arkle Challenge Trophy (Grade 1)
Ultima Handicap Chase (Grade 3)
Champion Hurdle (Grade 1)
Mares’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle (Grade 3)
National Hunt Chase (Grade 2)

For detailed insight and analysis, you can catch our Cheltenham day 1 tips.

Wednesday 13th March

The second day features the Queen Mother Champion Chase, a race that had been dominated by Great Britain up until 2022 with eight of the last nine winners. Having won the last three, Ireland and Willie Mullins will be confident of regaining the title with defending champion Energumene. The back-to-back winner was brilliant here on bottomless ground when claiming his first Champion Chase crown and perhaps even more so in 2023, running out a bloodless 10 length winner.
Delta Work won the Cross Country Chase in thrilling fashion from the two-time Grand National here Tiger Roll here in 2022. Having finished third in the Aintree showpiece himself a month later and returning with a win last term, connections were confident that the ten-year-old could become only the third horse to win the race back-to-back and their confidence was rewarded after another solid round of jumping and yet another battle after the last saw him get the better of Gordon Elliott’s Galvin by just over two lengths.

Wednesday kicks off with two novice events  – The Ballymore Novices Hurdle and the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase. Many horses are usually late to declare for the former, with some favouring other Novice Hurdle races throughout the week and this can make it a difficult enough betting heat. Elsewhere we have one of the trickiest handicaps of the week in the Coral Cup, the oldest race at the festival in the Grand Annual Chase and the Irish dominated Champion Bumper, a race won twelve times by Willie Mullins who scooped the race in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Races on Festival Wednesday

Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase (Grade 1)
Coral Cup (Grade 3)
Queen Mother Champion Chase (Grade 1)
Glenfarclas Chase (Cross Country)
Grand Annual Challenge Cup Handicap Chase (Grade 3)
Champion Bumper (Grade 1)

For detailed insight and analysis, you can catch our Cheltenham day 2 tips.

Thursday 14th March

Thursday at Cheltenham hosts the exciting, and relatively new race, the Dawn Run Novice’s Hurdle. It was won each of the first five times by Willie Mullins but since then Henry De Bromhead, Harry Fry and Jamie Snowden have taken the last three runnings.
The first of the two feature races on St Patrick’s Day is the Ryanair Chase. After two hugely dominating performances in 2021 and 2022, sadly Allaho couldn’t shake off the fitness issues that he’d been suffering with throughout the season which left Nicky Henderson’s Shishkin as clear favourite on the day. The nine-year-old just didn’t seem to give his true running on the day, however, making several serious errors on his way round, which left the path clear for Rachael Blackmore and Envoi Allen to take it up 2 out and stay on well up the hill to record his seventh chase win from thirteen starts.
The second feature on Thursday showcases the best 3 miles hurdlers around in the Stayers’ Hurdle. There has been no bias in terms of where the winners are trained in recent years with the last 9 renewals split five to four just in favour of Ireland. The betting was so tight at the top with a few having thrown their hats into the ring after impressive performances this season and others blotting their copybooks somewhat, so maybe it was no great surprise to see the two rank outsiders fighting it out at the finish with Gordon Elliott’s eleven-year-old, Sire Du Berlais, running out the winner by under a length to Dashel Drasher (who was later demoted to third behind Elliott’s main hope, Teahupoo).
The Pertemps Final is one of the most anticipated handicaps of the year. Qualifiers through the season set up a number of fascinating plot lines to make it the best puzzle of the week for punters.

Races on St Patrick’s Thursday

Turners Novices’ Chase (Grade 1)
Pertemps Final Handicap Hurdle (Grade 3)
Ryanair Chase (Grade 1)
Stayers’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Paddy Power Plate Handicap Chase (Grade 3)
Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 2)
Kim Muir Challenge Cup (Handicap)

For detailed insight and analysis, you can catch our Cheltenham day 3 tips.

Friday 15th March

Friday is the final day of the festival and it’s highlight is the Cheltenham Gold Cup. After falling at the last in the 2022 Turners Novices’ Chase, in what would have been a bloodless victory, all of the hype in the lead up to last year’s showpiece surrounded Galopin Des Champs. The Willie Mullins’ superstar didn’t disappoint, showing all of his usual zest and cruising through the race to take it up at the last and win going away by 7 lengths. As you’d expect in the most prestigious National Hunt race of them all, the dangers are all around again this term, but will anybody be able to live with a horse that could go down as an all time great?

The Albert Bartlett and Triumph Hurdle are the two novice contests on the card. Both have a reputation as hard races to win and 2024 look to be no exceptions with smart youngsters flooding the fields. They are notoriously fiendishly difficult races to predict so be sure to check out our Cheltenham day 4 tips for these two.
Following the Gold Cup is the Foxhunters, one of the biggest betting heats of the entire year and a race that tends to throw up big priced winners with SPs of 16/1, 25/1, 66/1, 16/1 and 66/1 in the last 7 renewals. Willie Mullins 100% record in the Mares’ Chase was ended in 2023 by Impervious, a horse that hadn’t run to potential at the previous festival but looked much improved since being bought by JP McManus and she provided a welcome winner for Colm Murphy, beating the Mullins-trained Allegorie De Vassy in the process.
The festival finishes with a conditional jockeys handicap named in honour of Britain’s most successful jumps trainer, Martin Pipe. The Irish have seen major success here in recent time having won all but three of the last ten renewals.

Races on Gold Cup Day

Triumph Hurdle (Grade 1)
County Handicap Hurdle (Grade 3)
Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Cheltenham Gold Cup (Grade 1)
Foxhunter Challenge Cup (Hunter Chase)
Mares’ Chase (Grade 2)
Martin Pipe Handicap Hurdle (Class 2)

For detailed insight and analysis, you can catch our Cheltenham day 4 tips.

Photograph by Grossick Racing Photography