How Many Irish Winners at the Cheltenham Festival?

The Irish revival 

But slowly and surely, it became clear that the tide was turning. Willie Mullins, who rode and trained Wither Or Which to his first Cheltenham success in the 2006 Champion Bumper, began to send over bigger and bigger squads to the Cotswolds. In 2009, Mullins saddled Quevega, Cooldine and Mikael D'Haguenet to victory, and a pattern began to emerge. 

Quevega, for one, would go on to win the Mares' Hurdle five more times while he began to have a near-monopoly on the Champion Bumper and many of the novice hurdles. A significant moment encapsulating the changing tide happened in 2013 when Ruby Walsh decided to part ways with champion English trainer Paul Nicholls to concentrate on riding for Willie Mullins in Ireland. That Walsh would leave such a prestigious job was a testament to the growing force of Closutton. 

Mullins had five winners at the Festival in 2014 but bettered that with six winners in 2015 to take the champion trainer trophy. Backed by mega-rich owners such as Rich Ricci and Michael O'Leary, Mullins was the envy of the national hunt scene. Any trainer would have begged to have a horse of the calibre of Hurricane Fly, Faugheen, Douvan, Vautour, or Annie Power, but Mullins had them all at once. 

Around this time, Gordon Elliott also started making a big name for himself in the British Isles. The Meath man put himself on the map in some style when saddling Silver Birch to win the 2017 Aintree Grand National, and it was a matter of increasing his string every year after that. As likely to have a runner at Ayr as Cheltenham, Elliott gained the support of some of the richest owners in national hunt racing and soon added Grade 1 horses to his stable. 

Elliott trained Don Cossack to win the 2016 Cheltenham Gold Cup for Gigginstown House Stud, but his stable star at the Festival has undoubtedly been Tiger Roll. The Authorised gelding won two Aintree Grand Nationals, but his five wins arguably trumped that at the Cheltenham Festival. At the 2018 Festival, Elliott (eight) and Mullins (seven) had fifteen victories, and more than half of the races run. Recent years have also seen the remarkable rise of Henry de Bromhead. 

In 2021, he did something that may never be repeated when training the winners of the Champion Hurdle (Honeysuckle), the Champion Chase (Put The Kettle On) and the first two home in the Gold Cup (Minella Indo and A Plus Tard).  Ireland also started to win the races we weren't meant to win. For instance, Ireland had a terrible record in the Triumph Hurdle for many years, with just one victory between 1998 and 2012. But since 2013, Ireland has won seven of the last ten runnings of the race. 

Irish Winners Dominate at Cheltenham 

2021 was the year that had British racing scratching their heads and wondering how all of their big prizes were ending up across the Irish Sea. A 24-length-winning performance for the Mullins-trained Appreciate It in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle was ominous for the home charge. However, they edged ahead when Shishkin won the Arkle and Vintage Clouds the Ultima Handicap Chase. 

But from then on, Irish-trained runners won 22 of the next 24 races. Perhaps more telling was that the home team accounted for only 40% of the runners in the races. In other words, not only was Ireland bagging more winners, but they were sending over more horses. 

The Prestbury Cup - a competition to see who can train the most winners over the four between the UK and Ireland - used to be a foregone conclusion for the home challenge. But the UK has not won the title since 2015. Twenty years ago, a handful of winners for Irish trainers was cause for celebration; now, 18 winners earlier this year were barely news. 

Prize Money

It is often said that you will never make money owning racehorses. For many owners, the prestige and stature of having your silks outweigh the likelihood of losing your investment. But if you are going to make any returns from buying a racecourse, the place to train your horses is where the prize money is richest, and that is Ireland. While there may be significantly more races run in the UK, the average prize money for national hunt races comes well short of comparative races run in Ireland. 

This means that it is often more attractive for UK-based owners to send their horses to be trained in Ireland. Despite hailing from America and being based in England, owner Rich Ricci sent most of his horses to Willie Mullins. Tony Bloom, the owner of Brighton Football Club, also does the same, while the Newmarket-based Cheveley Park Stud have sent their sales-toppers to Irish jumps trainers like Mullins, De Bromhead and Elliott. While not always the case, the best horses often sell for the most money, and the people with the most money send their horses to Ireland. 

Handicap Ratings

What has caused the most head-scratching amongst the English racing community is the fact that Irish runners have also been dominant in most of the handicap races. This is mystifying in ways because it is the English handicapper who assigns a rating to Irish horses racing across the water. Surely they could put a stop to Irish dominance by assigning more weight to their horses? Well, this is what they have tried to do in recent years, and it showed signs of working this year when the UK won the majority of the handicap races. 

Again, it can be attributed to a huge number of races run in the UK. The theory goes that horses have a much greater chance of winning races in the UK because there are plenty more of them, and their quality dilutes as a result. By winning races, the handicap rating of UK horses keeps on increasing so that they carry big weights when it comes to the Cheltenham Festival.

In contrast, in Ireland, races are more scarce and consequently more packed with quality runners. Very broadly, this means that an Irish horse who, say, has finished third or fourth in a very competitive handicap may not rise in the handicap ratings before ending up at Cheltenham Racecourse, where they will face inferior opposition. In sum, Irish racing is said to be a lot more competitive; therefore, there is a discrepancy between the quality of horses racing off the same mark on either side of the Irish Sea. 

Best Jockeys

Whatever percentage you put on a jockey's contribution to a horse's chances, there is no doubt that Ireland continues to produce the sport's finest riders. A golden generation has passed after the retirements of Tony McCoy, Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and Paul Carberry.

However, Ireland can still call on the likes of Paul Townend, Davy Russell, Mark Walsh, Patrick Mullins and Rachael Blackmore, the first woman to win the Gold Cup, to ride. While jockeys like Danny Mullins, Jack Kennedy, Jordan Gainford and Sam Ewing look set to promise that Ireland's best contenders at Cheltenham will continue to be steered by the best pilots. 

Do we care more? 

There is an argument that Irish trainers are more obsessed by the Cheltenham Festival than their English counterparts. From the start of the national hunt season, Irish trainers are often working backwards from the Cheltenham Festival to prime their horses for the Cotswolds. The Dublin Racing Festival, for instance, was set up in many ways to be the perfect preparation for Irish horses being targeted at Cheltenham. English trainer Paul Nicholls, in contrast, now often sidesteps Cheltenham with some of his best horses in order to target less competitive graded races at the Aintree Festival.