Which was the last Cheltenham Gold winner trained on British soil?
The Cheltenham Gold Cup is run over 3 miles, 2 furlongs on the New Course at Prestbury Park on the fourth, and final, day of the celebrated Cheltenham Festival in March each year. Worth £625,000 in guaranteed prize money, it is the most valuable weight-for-age steeplechase in the British National Hunt calendar and, arguably, the most prestigious race of ist kind to be find anywhere in the world. Valuable and prestigious it may be, but, since 2019 – when, coincidentally, the first-ever Cheltenham Gold Cup, dating from 1924, was reinstated as a perpetual trophy – the race has been ‘farmed’ by horses trained in Ireland.
In 2019, Al Boum Photo finally brought an end to the Gold Cup ‘hoodoo’ of perennial Irish champion trainer Willie Mullins, who had previously saddled the runner-up on six separate occasions. In 2020, shortly before the first coronavirus lockdown in Britain, Al Boum Photo won the ‘Blue Riband’ event again, thereby becoming the first horse since Best Mate, in 2003, to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup two years running. Mullins was also responsible for the 2023 winner, Galopin Des Champ and, in between times, Co. Waterford trainer weighed in with Minella Indo and A Plus Tard, who finished first and second, in reverse order, in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
To answer the headline question, though, the last Cheltenham Gold Cup winner trained on the British mainland was Native River, who, in 2018, fought a ding-dong battle with market rival Might Bite for most of the way, before asserting on the run-in to win by 4½ lengths in very game fashion. Trained by the now-retired Colin Tizzard in Milborne Port, near Sherborne, Dorset, Native River had finished third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2017 and went on to finish fourth in both 2019 and 2021.
Originally founded in London in 1750, the Jockey Club moved to Newmarket soon afterwards, where it established its own rules of racing, initially applicable only to Newmarket Heath, but subsequently adopted nationally and internationally. Indeed, until 1993, when the governance of horse racing was ceded to the newly-formed British Horseracing Board (BHB), the Jockey Club was officially reponsible for the control and regulation of the sport in Britain.
Run over 2,000 metres, or approximately a mile and a quarter, on a dirt surface, the Breeders’ Cup Classic is the most valuable and prestigious race run during the Breeders’ Cup World Championships. Established, as a one-day fixture, in 1984 and expanded to two days in 2007, the Breeders’ Cup consists of a series of 14 Grade 1 races, run over a variety of distances, on dirt and turf, at one of a selection of venues throughout North America.
Trainer Kenny McPeek has decided to run Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan in the $2 million Belmont Stakes on June 8 at Saratoga. Mystik Dan will face off against Preakness winner Seize the Grey, marking the first meeting of Derby and Preakness winners since 2013. Sierra Leone will also be in the field, who has been one of the best horses this year and narrowly lost out to Mystik Dan in the Kentucky Derby by a nose.