Cheltenham Festival 2023
In the wake of bumper attendance at the first post-Covid Cheltenham Festival in 2022, Jockey Club Racecourses, which owns Cheltenham, limited daily attendance to 68,500 in 2023. However, that limit was reached just once, on Gold Cup Day, and overall attendance was down by 39,027 compared with the previous year. Sparse crowds did little to detract from the quality of the on-course action, or continued Irish dominance, which saw the visitors win the Prestbury Cup 18-10, as they had done in 2022, and Willie Mullins and Paul Townend defend their leading trainer and jockey titles.
With the winner in 2021 and 2022, Honeysuckle, trained by Henry de Bromhead, redirected to the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle (which she won for the second time), there was a ‘changing of the guard’ in the Champion Hurdle. Having already won the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle and the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton Park, Constitution Hill, trained by Nicky Henderson, was sent off at prohibitive odds of 4/11 to complete the Triple Crown of Hurdling; he did so impressively, coming home nine lengths ahead of State Man, trained by Willie Mullins.
The leading trainer and jockey at the meeting combined to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup for the third time in five years, this time with the seven-year-old Galopin Des Champs, in the yellow and brown quartered colours of Mrs. Audrey Turley. Winner of the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle in 2021, Galopin Des Champs had fallen at the final fence, with the race at his mercy, in the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase on his return to the Cheltenham Festival in 2022.
However, he made no such mistake when winning his next three starts over fences, all at Grade 1 level, and was consequently sent off 7/5 favourite for the Gold Cup, ahead of the King George VI Chase winner, Bravemansgame. Indeed, it was the latter who proved his main danger, but once he took the lead at the final fence Galopin Des Champs never looked in danger of defeat and crossed the line seven lengths ahead, with a further six and half lengths back to the third horse, Conflated.