10 minute read
Cheltenham Data review
Running up that hill
Ciaran Doran takes a detailed look through the Cheltenham Festival results over the last 30 years analysing where winning and placed Festival “Triple Crown” horses were bred, alongside their individual pathways to success
Photography by Debbie Burt
EVERY 12 MONTHS one hill alone serves as the benchmark against which all NH champions are measured.
The Cheltenham hill isn’t for everyone; some horses recoil at the mere view of having to scale the Cotswolds’ most notorious incline (apologies to Cleeve Hill!), some horses, as we saw this year with Il Est Francais, are just better suited to flatter tracks.
In contrast, others, on hitting the front, view the stiff finish as “just their favourite hill to climb” to borrow a line from Simon Holt.
Regardless, the distinctive undulations allied to the iconic hill combine to deliver a searching examination of the best jumps horses across both sides of the Irish Sea each and every March, producing the brilliant racing that we have so loved for so many years and for so championships.
That said, for every equine fairytale story at Prestbury Park, there’s also a sire and a dam without whom the dreams of trainers, owners, and jockeys could not come to pass.
Breeding has always been roundly considered as more art than science and this is especially true for jumps racing.
A quick look at successful pedigrees highlights the sheer variety of stallions who have successfully sired Cheltenham winners – and this year only two sires produced two winners.
This is not to say though that jumps breeding is pure randomness; rather, certain trends can be gleaned on closer inspection.
Country by country trends
To start things off, which country has had the most success in terms of sires who have bred Cheltenham winners and placed horses in the Festival Triple Crown of the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase and the Gold Cup?
Ireland comes out on top when one looks at all horses who have won and placed in the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase, and Gold Cup between 1995 and 2025, with France narrowly edging out Britain for second.
However, it is French-bred stallions who have been the most successful in terms of siring Triple Crown winners in that time frame (25), with Irish-bred sires (22) just ahead of Britain (20) and the US (18).
French-bred sires seem to have enjoyed the Gold Cup most whereas Irish-bred and USbred sires prefer the Champion Hurdle test.
British-bred stallions on the other hand appear to favour the two major Triple Crown chases at the expense of the Champion Hurdle.
To what extent is this information insightful? American-bred stallions siring Cheltenham winners seems somewhat counter-intuitive at first, but becomes less surprising once one considers, first, the number of American-bred colts who raced and stood as stallions in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s such as Be My Native and Turgeon and, second, the ex-Flat horses who were successfully re-assigned to the hurdling division.
On a similar line of thought, one would expect the country most adept at developing Flat sires to also be the most adept at developing Champion Hurdle sires although admittedly, the Flat-to-hurdles conveyor belt seems to have broken down in the last 10-15 years.
Somewhat less surprising is the fact that French-bred sires have found the Gold Cup to their liking – in contrast, Oscar and Sholokhov were the only two Irish-bred stallions this century to sire Gold Cup winners (Lord Windermere and Don Cossack) prior to Walk In The Park, the current and this season’s elect NH champion, who has gaining his greatest moment so far as a jumps sire with the Gold Cup success of Inothewayurthinkin.
By sires who went jumping
Next, let’s take a look at the Triple Crownplaced horses from the last 30 years who were by a sire with jumping experience.
The Champion Hurdle is the Triple Crown race in which sires who jumped a fence are most unwelcome – prior to Constitution Hill (a son of the Grade 3-placed Blue Bresil) winning the Champion Hurdle in 2023, the only placed horse to be by a sire with jumps experience this side of 2004 was another son of Blue Bresil in Mick Jazz (third in 2018).
In comparison, sires with jumping experience have had more luck in the Champion Chase and Gold Cup, with this success mostly coming in the last decade.
For instance, six of the nine Gold Cups between 2017 and 2025 were won by sons of sires who jumped an obstacle – Minella Indo (Beat Hollow) in 2021 and Galopin Des Champs (Timos) in 2023 and 2024 being the exceptions.
Significantly, the vast majority of the sires were not just bred but also developed in France – stalwarts such as Saint Des Saints, Buck’s Boum, Kapgarde, and Denham Red have helped to sustain what now seems like a never-ending golden era of French NH sires.
French dominance in recent years
French sires have played an increasingly large part in the premier British and Irish steeplechases and the success of Frenchbreds in general has hardly gone unnoticed; one does not have to delve far into social media in the aftermath of big jumps races to witness people lamenting the current status of NH breeding in Britain and Ireland.
Irish breeders have, however, produced by far and away both the most Triple Crown winners in the last 30 years, as well as the most Triple Crown-placed horses.
Most of that Irish success has not been recent though – in the last decade, 14 Cheltenham Triple Crown winners wereFrench-bred compared to nine Irish-bred winners.
In an inversion of what we saw earlier, British breeders have fared best in the Champion Hurdle; indeed, the first two home in this year’s Champion Hurdle were both British-bred in the form of Golden Ace (Golden Horn) and Burdett Road (Muhaarar).
Coincidentally, the two also happen to be from the same extended family as 1995 Champion Hurdle winner, Alderbrook, himself the last entire to win a championship race at the Festival.
However, while British breeders might maintain a comparative advantage when itcomes to breeding Champion Hurdlers, the absolute advantage belongs to Irish breeders.
French and Irish breeders are closely matched when it comes to rearing Champion Chase horses, but, as far as breeding Gold Cup horses goes, Irish breeders still retain bragging rights over their Gallic counterparts – for now.
Flat v bumpers v point-to-points v hurdles
Historically speaking, the Champion Hurdle was the preserve of ex-Flat horses, between 1995 and 2002 every single winner of the Champion had begun their careers on the Flat.
Indeed, the Flat-to-hurdles pipeline has been the most fruitful source of Champion Hurdle winners (and placed horses) from 1995 to 2025.
However, the early 2010s marked something of an inflection point in terms of the developmental path taken by future Champion Hurdlers on their route to twomile glory. Since 2011, Hurricane Fly stands out as the only Champion Hurdler to have made his debut on the Flat.
In contrast, Rock On Ruby, Jezki, Annie Power, Buveur d’Air, Espoir d’Allen, Epatante, and Golden Ace (although she was bred to have raced on the Flat) all began their careers in bumpers while Faugheen, Honeysuckle, and Constitution Hill started off in point-to-points.
Point-to-points had been a more reliable pathway to Gold Cup glory than success in either the Champion Hurdle or Champion Chase but, since 2011 however, Native River and Minella Indo are the only Gold Cup winners in the last 30 years with point-to-point origins.
Five out of the last seven Cheltenham Gold Cups have been won by French-breds, with all five making their racecourse debut over hurdles. It is also worth noting the precocity of these French-breds in a division where backwardness traditionally was no bad thing – Al Boum Photo and A Plus Tard debuted as three-year-olds while Galopin Des Champs first raced as a four-year-old.
Notably, however, Inothewayurthinkin’s first ever start was as a four-year-old over hurdles in Cork in November 2022.
Bumpers have by far and away produced the greatest number of Champion Chase victors and placed runners, including this year’s winner, Marine Nationale.
Bumpers also happen to be a close enough second behind the Flat when it comes to Champion Hurdle winners and a very respectable third as far as producing Gold Cup winners goes.
This does exclude those who raced in bumpers having first been tried out over obstacles – for instance, Brave Inca was re-routed to bumpers as a young horse
Stamina wins out
Finally, let’s assess how the successful sires and dam sires compare in terms of speed versus stamina and distance.
One would expect that there would be no discernible difference between the preferred trips of Champion Hurdle-winning and Champion Chase-winning sires and that Gold Cup-winning sires would be more stamina-laden than both, and the results largely seem to track what one would expect in theory.
Irrespective of whether one focuses on all placed horses or merely Triple Crown winners, to meet the Gold Cup challenge, as expected, horses by and large need to be by a sire who has stamina in abundance.
Hardy Eustace’s sire Archway (a halfbrother to Dr Devious) was the quickest of all Triple Crown-winning sires between 1995 and 2004, 6f being the longest trip he won over during his racing career.
Other speedy sires include Norwich, Green Desert, Komaite, and Enrique and who sired Newmill, Collier Bay, Punjabi, and Binocular respectively. Given the presence of sires with jumping experience, there are quite a few Triple Crown-winning stallions who won over a trip in excess of two miles.
Narrowing down the list to only those who never jumped an obstacle, we are left with Kayf Tara, Ardross, Tiraaz, Milan, and Crillon who were the respective sires of Special Tiara, Alderbrook, Finian’s Rainbow, Jezki, and Buveur D’Air.
Coincidentally, all five were winners over the minimum trip in either the Champion Hurdle or the Champion Chase.
The longest distance Gold Cup sires won over on the Flat in this sample was 1m6f (Torus and Zaffaran, sires of Mr Mulligan and Looks Like Trouble).
This year, a Derby and Arc winner in Golden Horn sired the Champion Hurdle winner, French Navy, the sire of Marine Nationale, won a Group 3 over 1m2f, while the furthest distance Walk In The Park won over was a mile although he did admittedly split Motivator and Dubawi in the Derby plus also take fifth in a Listed hurdle over 2m2f in his only start over obstacles.
For as much as variety has come to define successful pedigrees at Cheltenham, there still exist trends which have emerged over the course of the last 30 years.
Past performance is by no means a castiron guarantee of future production; just ask British and Irish jumps breeders who have come to be overshadowed by their Gallic counterparts in recent times.
That said, statistical approaches are seen to best effect when one digs into the findings, when questioning why such relationships exist in the first place, and when examining what is happening now.
Why are bumpers the most fertile soil on which to race a young jumps horse? How much of France’s recent success can be attributed to their development of sires with jumping backgrounds themselves?
Should we be placing more emphasis on the precocity of jumps horses?
Why are there fewer and fewer Flat horses going hurdling?
These are questions which have perplexed breeders and the powers-that-be for a long time now; only once these questions are properly answered will British and Irish jumps breeding be finally able to address what has been a slow and steady decline.
Until then though, while this year might have offered a temporary reprieve, it’s a case of “Allez France” as far as Cheltenham Triple Crown winners go.
