Key events
Luke McLaughlin
Morning everyone, and thank you Greg for that comprehensive introduction. Exciting times.
Let’s take a look at the day one preview, written by none other than Greg Wood:
Preamble
Greg Wood
Top of the morning from Cheltenham racecourse on day one of the 2026 festival. Oh, the places we’ll go over the next four afternoons, as the National Hunt season reaches a crescendo with 13 Grade One races, 13 handicaps with a depth of competitiveness that all but defies rational analysis, and a couple of Grade Twos that are a chance to take a breath.
This is a day that never loses its giddy, stomach-churning excitement, and I say that from experience as someone who has not missed an opening day at Cheltenham since my first in 1990, when Kribensis and Richard Dunwoody won the Champion Hurdle at the memorable odds of 95-40. The running order has changed down the years (along with the number of races and days at the meeting), but the tingle as the field walks toward the tape before the Supreme Novice Hurdle is, for me, up there with the finest moments in all of sport.
On the track, there are serious hopes that British stables will stage a revival after a decade of annual pummelling at the hands of the Irish. It did not occur to me at the time, but for what it is, or more probably is not, worth, I put up six British-trained horses and only one from Ireland in the tips for the opening day. The result that might get racing onto the front pages, meanwhile, would be a win for Harry Redknapp’s The Jukebox Man in Friday’s Gold Cup.
Off the track, meanwhile, the daily attendance figures will be closely studied for evidence that Cheltenham’s extensive range of schemes and innovations to tempt customers back to the track have started to have some effect. The festival is the biggest meeting of the year bar none, and four straight years of falling attendance would be bitterly disappointing not just for the track, but the sport as a whole.
One key indicator that seems sure to be up (or, if you are being pedantic, down) is the number of odds-on shots over the week, a sign of the depth of competition overall. There have been seven odds-on chances in each of the last two seasons, but there are only four in the current lists and that can only be a positive for the betting turnover.
There is certainly no lack of competition in today’s seven races, which include three handicap chases and the Fred Winter Handicap Hurdle, frequently the most impenetrably tricky event of the week. Race-by-race previews will be here throughout the afternoon, along with all the news, views, results, betting and gambles, as the 2026 Cheltenham festival finally gets under way.
Leave a Reply