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.