County Hurdle

Historically the ‘getting out stakes’ at the Cheltenham Festival, the County Hurdle is currently scheduled as the second race on Gold Cup Day but, with a safety limit of 26, remains as competitive as ever. Run over two miles and a furlong on the New Course and open to horses aged five years and upwards, the race has produced just two winning favourites since 2015, one of which was subsequent Champion Hurdle winner State Man. At the other end of the betting spectrum, winners at 33/1 (three times), 25/1 and 20/1 in the past decade are indicative of the problem the County Hurdle presents punters.

Competitive though it may be, Willie Mullins has saddled seven winners of the County Hurdle, namely Thousand Stars (2010), Final Approach (2011), Wicklow Brave (2015), Arctic Fire (2017), Saint Roi (2020), State Man (2022) and Absurde (2024), making him the leading trainer since World War II. His stable jockey, Paul Townend, rode four of those winners and is, jointly, the leading jockey.

The 158-rated Arctic Fire (11st 12lb) was something of an outlier, insofar as all the other winners since 2015 were officially rated between 134 and 146 and eight of them carried 11st 1lb or less. Likewise Arctic Fire, Ch’tibello (2019) and Favoir (2023) were all eight-year-olds, but the other seven winners in that period were aged five or six. Interestingly, Warwickshire trainer Dan Skelton all saddled four winners of the County Hurdle, only one of which was in the first three in the betting, all in the last 10 years.