Arkle Challenge Trophy

Run over the minimum distance of two miles on the Old Course at Prestbury Park, the Arkle Challenge Trophy is currently scheduled as the second race on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival. As such, it is the second of the 14 Grade 1 races run during the four days, after the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Established, in its current guise, in 1969, the race commemorates Arkle, arguably the greatest steeplechaser of all time.

The Arkle Challenge Trophy is open to novice steeplechasers – or, in other words, horses that, prior to the start of the current season, have not won a race over fences – aged five years and upwards. Granted that it is the premier race of its kind in the National Hunt calendar, it should come as no surprise to learn that winners often return to the Cheltenham Festival to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Moscow Flyer (2002), Azertyuiop (2003), Voy Por Ustedes (2006), Sizing Europe (2010), Sprinter Sacre (2012), Altior (2017) and Put The Kettle On (2020) all won the two-mile steeplechasing championship the folllowing year.

Upper Lambourn trainer Nicky Henderson, who saddled Sprinter Sacre and Altior, plus Remittance Man (1991), Travado (1993), Tiutchev (2000), Simonsig (2013) and Shishkin (2021), is the leading trainer in the history of the Arkle Challenge Trophy. His erstwhile stable jockey, Barry Geraghty, who rode Sprinter Sacre and Simsonsig, plus Moscow Flyer for Jessica Harrington and Forpadydeplasterer (2009) for Tom Cooper, is jointly the leading rider, alongside compatriot Ruby Walsh, with four winners.