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Pulse Check
Festival Form Analysis
Cheltenham Festival Form Analysis
Prior Cheltenham Festival form is something which is frequently talked about so let’s look at how important this could be. It’s worth stating that in some cases horses are unlikely to have had the opportunity to run at the Festival previously, for example when it comes to the novice hurdles (Supreme, Turners and Albert Bartlett) unless they ran in the Champion Bumper, though for completeness we have analysed all races.
Repeat Defenders
So which races have the most back to back winners and what races did they win in the prior year?
The stand out is the Champion Hurdle with six horses winning at the Cheltenham Festival for the second year in succession. The path is varied though with two repeat Champion Hurdle winners in Buveur D’air & Honeysuckle, two from the Mares Hurdle, Honeysuckle again and Lossiemouth, one from the Mares Novices in Golden Ace and of course Constitution Hill who romped home in the Supreme in 2022 and also the Champion Hurdle in 2023.
There are three races with four back to back Cheltenham Festival winners which are the Cross-Country, Mares Hurdle and the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Starting with the Queen Mum, we have two repeat winners in Nicky Henderson’s Altior and Energumene from the Mullins Closutton yard and two novice to champion winners in Altior again and the Henry de Bromhead trained Put The Kettle on.
The Mares hurdle has four different paths with one repeat winner in Lossiemouth, one that went back from the Champion Hurdle to win in Honeysuckle, Lossiemouth again who stepped up as a four year old from the Triumph Hurdle, and last year Wodhooh won after success in the 2025 Martin Pipe Hurdle.
Finally, we have the cross-country which is clearly a unique and specialised race. That said although the Gordon Elliott trained Tiger Roll (2018-19) and Delta Work (2022-23) won in consecutive years, Tiger Roll first won in 2017 when collecting the National Hunt Chase. That was back in the good old days when it was a four miler with amateur jockeys. In the same year as Tiger Roll won the National Hunt, his trainer won the Cross-Country with Cause of Causes having won the other amateur race, the Kim Muir, back in 2016.
Summary
In summary, festival form is certainly a strong consideration when looking at the 2027 Festival. Again in the last four years we have effectively ten of the twenty-eight winners having run at the festival previously with an average of almost five as immediate prior year winners. Now, if you factor in that just under 75% of winners return the following year, the average over ten years is 73.5%, then of those winners returning around 25% will win if repeating the trends in the last four renewals.
Some interesting insights to consider as you prepare for the 2027 Cheltenham Festival.
Happy racing!
Headlines
The headline news when narrowing down to the last eleven renewals is that over 30% of winners had prior Festival experience! Furthermore, previous Festival experience featured in 36% of winners over the last four Festivals, with on average 10 of 28 winners having run at the Festival previously.
Obviously winning at back-to-back festivals is more of an ask though again the numbers are very strong with 15.4% of previous year winners returning to win again over the last eleven renewals since 2016 – note this is a strict Y-1 and Y winners and not with breaks. As with all returning to the Cheltenham Festival with experience, immediate past winners are trending positively with the last four renewals averaging 17.1% - an average of 4.75 per year.