The great Sprinter Sacre: Dual winner of the Queen Mother Champion Chase: Wikimedia Commons Wednesday, day two of The Festival, and it’s Champion Chase day. There can be no better sight to a lover of this Sport of Kings than the two mile chasers attacking those fences at full tilt before grinding it out up the punishing hill on the …

David P Howard: Geograph The crowds will be missing, the owners cannot enjoy their moment in the winners’ enclosure, the amateur jockeys have been supplanted this year and there’ll be no roar from over sixty thousand racegoers to send them off, but, it’s still The Festival, the most important of all the National Hunt meetings. It’s the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, …

The daily preview for the Cheltenham Festival from Hector Steiff Wikimedia Commons What a difference a year makes! On March 9th last year, at Plumpton racecourse, I chatted to one of the Tote girls. She told me it would be the first time in thirty-one years she would not be working the Festival. Knowing that there was a government meeting …

A Preview of the Dublin Racing Festival by Hector Steiff The Christmas Festival in the Dublin suburb that is Leopardstown is a great social occasion, but, with the Cheltenham Festival edging ever closer this is the real racing festival that matters in the Irish National Hunt Season. Four Grade 1’s, one Grade 2 and three Grade B handicaps and that …

A preview of this weekend’s racing in store from Cheltenham, Doncaster and Naas Wikimedia Commons: Ghaiyaath We have long been fans of Ghaiyaath here in the Office so we are delighted to celebrate his success as the world’s best racehorse at the Longines World Racing Awards. Last year saw the son of Dubawi fulfil all the promise shown over the …

Longchamp Parade Ring: Wikimedia Commons Winter has a deadly grip on Northern Europe and beyond, and as bad news surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic seems to dominate all the headlines, we can look ahead to some quality horseracing over the weekend as a brief diversion. However, this week also has brought us the sad news of the passing of Prince Khalid …

As the end to 2020 draws near we reflect on a year like no other. Early reports of a novel virus appearing in Wuhan province in China hardly made headline news at the start of this year. How things have changed, and there are many things that have changed forever, and many lives mourned. Just a return to normality will …

Racing Preview for Cheltenham’s International Meeting Friday 11th & Saturday 12th December 2020 Wikimedia Commons Mid December and it’s time to return to the Prestbury Park track at Cheltenham, the spiritual home of National Hunt horseracing in the UK.Known as the International Meeting such a description could not really be further from imagined reality in these Covid affected days. The …

A preview of the Triple Crown of Hurdling by Hector Steiff While we celebrate the announcement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that spectators can finally return to racecourses from next week we can also look ahead to one of the bookmarks in the racing calendar, the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Gosforth Park, NewcastleNamed after the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers whose nickname …

It’s the Autumn Festival at Cheltenham ominously starting on Friday 13th but the National Hunt season is well and truly under way with some big guns out this weekend including double Grand National winner Tiger Roll among the stars to be seen on the Prestbury Park track.With Atlantic storms heading across from the west there are ground concerns for all …