The Champion Hurdle
The Champion Hurdle
The race is a Grade 1 National Hunt race for four-year-olds and upwards, the distance is 2 miles and is the main highlight on the first day of the Festival.
It is a massive betting race and punters love it, The Champion Hurdle is one race I really look forward to each year.
We seen Binocular winning last year but had a setback just before the race and connections were not going to run, this led the horse to drift to very high odds on the exchanges and a few backers at 1,000/1 were sitting pretty when he won this race well backed on the day.
| Year | Horse | Trainer | Odds |
| 2010 | Binocular | N Henderson | 9 |
| 2009 | Punjabi | N Henderson | 22 |
| 2008 | Katchit | A King | 10 |
| 2007 | Sublimity | John G Carr | 16 |
| 2006 | Brave Inca | C Murphy | 1.5 |
Some useful stats we can use to try and find the winner in this event.
The last 16 winners all ran that same year, so don’t look for a horse that has not run in a long time.
A winner last time out is very positive, in fact 23 of the last 25 winners of this race finished 1st or 2nd in their last race.
French bred horses are worth a second look at in the market and are respected.
It is worth noting that previous Cheltenham form holds up very strong in the Champion hurdle we see each year winners who have ran with credit at the festival before.
18 out of 20 winners of this event were in the first 6 of the betting again this is a good race to get stuck into the front couple of horse behind the favourite.
If you have a winner last time out, aged less than 8 years old and has previous form at the track you are on the right path to finding a useful runner.
Some facts about the Champion Hurdle.
Dawn Run was the first mare to win the Champion Hurdle in 1984; she had also won the French and Irish Champion Hurdles that year, a wonder horse that came back 2 years later to win the Gold Cup!
The most current triple winner was Istabraq who was an amazing race horse.
He won the Champion Hurdle in 1998, 1999 and 2000 he was on track to win it for the 4th time in a row and was favorite to do so in 2001 but the meeting was called off due to foot and mouth disease.
Trainer Nicky Henderson has won this race 5 times and is joint top trainer along with Peter Easterby.
Check back closer to race day for our best bet in this event.