James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup

The verbosely-titled St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Open Hunters’ Chase is run over an extended three and a quarter miles on the New Course at Cheltenham or, in other words, over the same course and distance as the Cheltenham Gold Cup, which it immediately follows. Established in 1904, but sponsored by wealth management company St. James’s Place since 2016, the race is open to horses aged five years and upwards, which are qualified to run in hunters’ steeplechases and satisfy other entry criteria with regard to their performance in those and/or point-to-point races.

Aside from 2021, when the Cheltenham Festival was staged behind closed doors and amateur jockeys were unable to compete because of public health restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, the St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup is confined to nonprofessional riders.

Rather fittingly, the late Richard Barber still shares the distinction of being leading trainer with Paul Nicholls, for whom he ran a satellite yard at Seaborough in Dorset. Barber saddled Rushing Wild (1992), Fantus (1995, 1997) and Earthmover (1998) and Nicholls later followed suit with Earthmover (2004), Sleeping Night (2005) and Pacha du Polder (2017, 2018). Former top amateur Colman Sweeney, who rode Sleeping Night and Salsify (2012, 2013), remains the leading jockey.

The St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup has produced three winning favourites since 2015, but winners at 66/1 (twice), 25/1 and 16/1 (twice) in the same period suggest that the race is not always plain sailing for punters.