The Turners Novices’ Chase that opens today’s card breaks new ground for the Cheltenham Festival, but not in a good way. It is the first race at the meeting to feature not a single runner trained in Britain.
This race was only added to the Festival in 2011 and has attracted single-figure fields in five of the past seven years but this year’s renewal is a nadir, with all four runners trained in Ireland.
The lack of challengers is in part down to the fact that there are two seemingly outstanding runners in Bob Olinger and Galopin Des Champs.
Their presence has undoubtedly scared off some of the opposition but it is nonetheless disturbing that British trainers cannot muster a single runner between them for a grade one race at the biggest jump meeting of the year.
The National Hunt Challenge Cup that closed Tuesday’s card was also lacking in competition, with the six runners comprising four from Ireland and two outsiders from the Welsh stables of Rebecca Curtis.
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They picked up £12,000 prize money between them as they finished fourth and fifth, benefiting from one of the Irish runners being pulled up.
At least they tried, but they were never likely to be overly competitive. They had barely jumped the final fence when the winner was crossing the line.
The Turners Chase today is the smallest field at jump racing’s showpiece event since the 1994 Cathcart Chase, won by the Nicky Henderson-trained Raymylette. That in itself was the first time that so few horses had contested a race since Arkle scared off the opposition in the 1965 Gold Cup.
Small fields have become a regular feature, with only five horses contesting the Arkle in two of the past four years and the same number running in last year’s Champion Chase.
The novice contests have not been helped by the introduction of races over intermediate distances, such as the Turners. It is staged over 2½ miles, taking away possible runners from both the two-mile Arkle Chase and three-mile Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase.
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If more races are to be added, as has been suggested, to stretch the Festival still further to a fifth day, they would have to be handicaps as there just are not enough top-class horses to go around.
It seems inconceivable that adding a couple of handicaps to what is billed as the Olympics of jump racing, and cutting each day back to six races from the present seven, will be welcomed by racegoers.