After a big review in the summer of 2024 the upcoming Cheltenham Festival will see some significant changes which could impact how you bet at the biggest horse racing meeting of the season.
The main changes are as below:
- No More Middle-Distance Novice Grade One Chase
- Novices Now Eligible for Handicap Races: Key Changes
- Cross-Country Race Now a Handicap: What You Need to Know
- Pertemps Handicap Tweaks for 2025 Season
- National Hunt Chase: Amateur-Only Rule Removed
- Mares Novice Races Now Penalty-Free: New Regulations Explained
Let’s have a deep look of the changes:
No middle-distance novice grade one chase
One effort to ensure more competitive field sizes has been the amendment in the novice chase division. We now have just the Arkle over two miles and the Broadway over three miles. The change has come in the two-mile four novice chase which turns to a novice handicap. This move should in theory push more horses into the two graded novice chases whilst ensuring a very competitive handicap. Recent renewals of the middle-distance novice chase had seen a low of just four runners in 2022 and this move should be positive for punters and betting turnover aiding all three contests.
Changes to novices running in handicaps
Solving the Cheltenham handicaps is a puzzle that has been enjoyed by punters for many years. Arguably this year’s rule change should mean that form students have a greater advantage with novice hurdlers now requiring five runs to qualify for a Festival Handicap whilst chasers need four efforts over fences. This move should ensure that fewer unexposed graded horses can sneak into a handicap. One negative of this move is that it will shake up the stats and trends that historically have been useful for narrowing the field, it could potentially see Cheltenham handicaps go the way of more experienced types coming down the handicap.
The Cross-Country returns to a handicap
We have been very used to seeing top quality winners of the Cross Country, Tiger Roll was a three-time winner of it and often used the race ahead of his successful efforts in the Grand National. It was a handicap previously from its introduction in 2005 until 2016 when it moved to a conditions race. Recent history has seen many short prices favourites go well and the betting public always seemed to take to the fact there was a ‘banker’ style horse running to get behind or take on in the race.
Pertemps Tweaks
We are used to seeing the odd change to how horses qualify for a Pertemps final, this year the winner of the qualifiers will be guaranteed to get a run providing they are within the handicap range at time of declaration. The rest of the field will be made up of the qualifiers that fill the 2nd to 4th positions of the qualifiers across the season.
National Hunt Chase Amateur Only No More
One of the more controversial amendments was the change to allow professional riders into the National Hunt Chase race on the opening day. The race itself had been rumoured to be one potentially on the chopping block when changes to the Festival were discussed. As well as the change to allow professionals, the race itself has moved to a 0-145 handicap in a move to try and improve the field sizes.
Mares Novice Penalty free
Since its creation as a grade two event, the Mares Novice hurdle was seeing winners of a class one or two event in the same season carry a penalty in the race. The idea of removing this was to ensure we saw potential winners of the race have a busier season in the lead up to the Festival. Given the current favourite Maugheen has been sighted just once this season it doesn’t seem to have significantly changed how many times contenders for the race run.
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