Wednesday afternoon brings more high-class action from Prestbury Park as day two of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival gets underway.
Jonbon is a warm favourite for that contest as Nicky Henderson’s star looks to emulate former stable greats Altior and Sprinter Sacre in winning the race under Nico De Boinville.
Elsewhere on the card there is plenty more exciting action, including another three Grade 1s and the much-loved Cross Country Chase.
Here’s what’s in store…
Big Race Preview: Champion Chase
Twenty career starts, 17 wins, nine of them in Grade 1s and more than £1million accrued in prize money. Never outside the top two in his life, Jonbon has shed the tag of his quirky early days to become just about the most consistent horse in training. And yet…
The lack of a Cheltenham Festival victory remains a gaping hole on the nine-year-old’s CV and, indeed, has been the subject of much preview night debate. There was little shame in finishing second to Constitution Hill as a novice hurdler, nor an on-song El Fabiolo in the Arkle, but throw in a shock defeat on Trials Day in 2024 and it remains an inarguable fact that Jonbon’s only three defeats ever have come at this track.
That is just about the only stick with which to beat the odds-on favourites, aside from the quirk that short-priced runners have a bizarrely poor record in the Champion Chase.
Adam Davy/PA Wire
Beyond the favourite, this does not look a deep renewal. Willie Mullins’s Energumene has won the race twice before but is surely past his peak and would like softer ground.
Marine Nationale, the winner of the Supreme Novices’s Hurdle two years ago, is perhaps the challenger with most untapped potential and would be a hugely popular winner given his association with Michael O’Sullivan, the young jockey tragically killed in a racecourse fall at Thurles last month.
Solness must prove that back-to-back Grade 1 triumphs when allowed to front-run at Leopardstown can translate across the Irish Sea, while Found A Fifty will need to rediscover his early season form to trouble the places.
The record of British novice hurdlers at the Cheltenham Festival has not been good in recent years and for those coming to the meeting on the back of Challow Hurdle success earlier in the season it is even worse.
Dan Skelton’s The New Lion will look to buck both trends in Wednesday’s opener, the Turners Novices’ Hurdle, against a strong Irish challenge that is headed by Final Demand, a hugely impressive winner at the Dublin Racing Festival last month.
The British hand in the Brown Advisory Novices’s Chase, however, was weakened significantly earlier in the campaign with the injury to Ben Pauling’s hugely promising The Jukebox Man. Instead, Mullins appears to have a strong grip on the contest, with Ballyburn – a winner on this very card last year – favourite to see off stablemate Dancing City, a Grade 1 winner at Aintree and Punchestown over hurdles last term.
Harry Skelton abroad The New Lion
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The Cross Country Chase has provided some Festival highlights in recent years but takes on a different shape this year having been reverted to a handicap, one of three on the card alongside the helter-skelter Grand Annual and the notoriously tricky Coral Cup.
Finally, what looks an open renewal of the Champion Bumper brings the seven-race card to a close.
Cheltenham Festival 2025 day 2 schedule
13.20: Turners Novices’ Hurdle
14.00: Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase
15.20: Cross Country Steeple Chase
16.40: Grand Annual Steeple Chase Challenge Cup
