Pulse Check
Novice to Champion Analysis 

A great deal of emphasis is given to prior Cheltenham form, especially Festival form. Related to this it would be good to explore what has happened with novices that step into open company, specifically those going for championship races. In this article we provide Novice to Champion analysis for the Cheltenham Festival.

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How often do we see the Arkle winner being installed as the favourite for the Queen Mother? Or indeed the Supreme winner, favourite for the Champion Hurdle? It’s worth looking at the recent history to understand the frequency of the “novice to champion” pathway to help with any ante-post thoughts and indeed in the approach to the festival.

 

Our analysis will focus on the paths of winning novice hurdlers to champions and the same for novice chasers. So for example, the Arkle winner one year winning the Queen Mother Champion Chase the next – or indeed the Gold Cup. Note we won’t get into horses that have gaps between the novice and championship race as it widens the scope and is more in the festival form focus area. Gaelic Warrior is a good example of that. Our scope will be the last ten years as that is what is most relevant – trends evolve as do horses and trainers so this is more recent look into this specific area.

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So novice hurdles which are now the Supreme, Turners (previously Ballymore) and Albert Bartlett going on to win the Champion Hurdle or the Stayers Hurdle. For chasers it would be those winning the Arkle or Brown Advisory (the RSA for us older folks) and going on to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase or the Gold Cup. I don’t consider the Ryanair in this analysis as a true Novice to Champion path.

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Hurdles

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Let's start with the Champion hurdle: One horse has gone from novice to champion in the last 10 years. The 2022 Supreme winner – the monster that was Constitution Hill, as he went on to demolish the field in the 2023 champion hurdle. You would be forgiven for thinking this must have happened a few times perhaps in the 80’s, 90’s or sometime more recently but the previous supreme to champion was back in 1971 – by the great Bula – so effectively less than 2% strike rate for the last fifty years.

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Sticking with hurdlers we had the Willie Mullins trained Penhill, who won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle (2017) then the Stayers’ Hurdle (2018). He was the first to complete this specific double. Amazingly he only had one run which was in defeat to the great Faugheen (the machine) between the two festival victories.

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So only two novice hurdlers that stepped up from novice to champion in recent years. Surprisingly few.

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What about the chasers?

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Like Constitution Hill, the next novice to champion was trained at Seven Barrows by Nicky Henderson. He actually won the Supreme, then the Arkle, and followed that up in the Queen Mother in 2018 – it was, of course, the great Altior. He went on to retain the title with a second Champion Chase win in 2019 and was an all-time great. Interestingly, when Altior won the Supreme in 2016, a certain Buveur D'Air was eight-and-a-half lengths back in third. The Henderson second string on the day went on from novice to Champion Hurdle winner in 2017 and 2018. We'll cover this area more in the Festival Form analysis.

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Another that went Arkle to Queen Mother success in consecutive seasons was the Henry de Bromhead trained mare, Put The Kettle On. She won the Arkle Challenge Trophy Novices’ Chase (2020) then the Queen Mother Champion Chase (2021) and, perhaps surprisingly, was the first mare to win the Champion Chase. In fact, she remains the only mare to have won the Champion Chase - take note Kargese fans.

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Back to Seven Barrows and in the same season as Put the Kettle on won the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Shishkin was following up a Supreme Novices Hurdle win in 2020 with the Arkle in 2021. Those amongst us may remember a motionless D J Russell on Abacadabras for the Supreme in 2020! So Shishkin was not a novice to champion, but it does highlight Henderson's appetite for this path - will Old Park Star follow suit?

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Outside of the time period another Henderson horse, Bobs Worth stepped up. Like Altior he won a novice hurdle, in his case the Albert Bartlett, before switching to fences and winning the RSA in 2012 and then the Gold Cup in 2013 – a great achievement.

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Pulse Summary

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So all in all, very few are able to make the step up from winning a novice event one year to a championship race the following year – only four in the last decade. Nicky Henderson was responsible for 50% of these and has Old Park Star in his armoury for 2027.  

 

We will cover more general Cheltenham festival form separately, but I hope this has provided some useful analysis and insight for those considering following a novice into championship territory.

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Happy racing.