2026 Cheltenham Festival: One that will live in the memory - not least for the upsets
GOLDEN BOY: Paul Townend celebrates winning the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup. Pic: Tom Maher/Inpho
The 2026 Cheltenham Festival will be remembered for many reasons, not least the sheer volume of shock results.
And while Apolon De Charnie winning the JCB Triumph Hurdle, the opening race on Gold Cup day, at odds of 50-1 wasn’t as seismic as Poniros’s 100-1 win last year, it was still a huge surprise.
“He came in late and had a very light prep, and we were hoping for the best,” winning trainer Willie Mullins said of the winner, one of nine Closutton contenders in the race. “I didn’t give Patrick (Mullins) any instructions going out, I just said that we thought the start would be a circus. It was actually a very good start, thankfully. He had his own way of riding it, he just rode to his own instructions, so that was easy enough.
“Every time I looked at him on the TV, I could see him going well. He was going well all the time, while my other ones were meeting with trouble. Proactif was coming with a run, Mon Creuset was coming with a run, I thought: ‘We have chances here’, coming to the second last. But Patrick managed to get his head through.”
On the attitude the horse showed when he hit the front, Mullins added: “I loved that. I thought he was going to win before the last, then after the last he had to get down and win the race for a second time – you’d have to say he had to win for a second time. Once he got to that front and heard that Cheltenham roar, he still didn’t stop. A lot of horses put their heads up when they hear that Cheltenham roar, but he didn’t, he did it very well.”
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Leg two of what turned out to be a Closutton treble completed by Gaelic Warrior in the Boodles Gold Cup came in race three when the JP McManus-owned Dinoblue retained her Mares’ Chase crown in the hands of Mark Walsh.
Mullins said: “One thing Mark said when he got off her was that her jumping today was magical.
“She's very uncomplicated, a lovely mare, and she's a good match with Mark. If you had a horse jump like that every day of the week, it would make this game easy.”
In the concluding Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys' Handicap Hurdle, there was a second win of the week for Henry de Bromhead as Air Of Entitlement followed up her victory in last year's Mares' Novices' Hurdle on her return to Prestbury Park.
Patrick O'Brien was aboard the winner, with the young Irishman praised for his ride by Robcour's Brian Acheson.
He said: “It's a brilliant way to end the week and when we were talking at the beginning of the season, we were wondering if she would be in the Mares' Hurdle but she wasn't good enough for that.
“It might just be the case where she is a little bit like Bob Olinger and Lossiemouth where she just lights up here and you think we'll take a run at this race.
“Maybe the key was actually getting Patrick O'Brien, as I know it's only his second ride here but he gave her some spin, so well done to him.”
