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The Cheltenham Festival has seen some of the greatest horses in racing history become legends. Here, we count down the most successful horses ever at Cheltenham.
The Cheltenham Festival is the pinnacle of the jumps racing season and, by some distance, the most eagerly anticipated week in the jumps racing calendar.
For four days in mid-March, the undulations of Prestbury Park and the drama that unfolds on them helps to thrust racing into the forefront of public consciousness, as Cheltenham betting and the sport itself take centre stage.
Several horses have become household names with their performances at the Cheltenham Festival over many years. Here, we recall the 10 most successful horses at Cheltenham over the years, by manner of victories recorded at The Festival, in a subjective list.
The horses with the most Cheltenham wins
10. Honeysuckle
There are other four-time Cheltenham winners, but Honeysuckle completes this list by virtue of her unbeaten record at the Festival. Two Champion Hurdles bookended by two wins in the Mares’ Hurdle, all of them under Rachael Blackmore, make them the Queens of the Cotswolds!
9. Altior
The Nicky Henderson-trained Altior won a stellar renewal of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2016, beating a dual subsequent Champion Hurdler in Buveur D’air, before landing the Arkle a year later and then successive Queen Mother Champion Chases in 2018 and 2019. He set the record for successive wins in jumps races at 19 in a row.
8. Sir Ken
Being a three-time Champion Hurdler winner is a select band and Sir Ken deserves his place on this list. He won the two-mile Championship race in 1952, 1953 and 1954 and then bagged his fourth Festival success a year later in what we now know as the Arkle. Quite the CV.
7. Persian War
In the modern day, plenty of Triumph Hurdle winners have been known to struggle in open company but not Persian War, winner of the four-year-old race in 1967 before going on to land three Champion Hurdles in the ensuing years for trainer Colin Davies and rider Jimmy Uttley.
6. Istabraq
Four was the magic number too for the great Istabraq, who was trained by Aidan O’Brien to win the Champion Hurdle three times on the trot from 1998-2000 having landed the Baring Bingham as a novice. He is amongst the greatest of two-mile hurdlers.
5. Big Buck’s
Sam Thomas can lay claim to the most pivotal unseat there has ever been, when he parted company with Big Buck’s at the last in the Hennessy Gold Cup in 2008. That was enough to convince trainer Paul Nicholls to go back over hurdles and the rest, as they say, is history. Big Buck’s won the Stayers’ Hurdle four years in a row, returning an SP no shorter than 5/6 as bookmakers tried to take him on.
4. Arkle
Four-times a Festival winner in the Cotswolds, Arkle is racing royalty. Trainer Tom Dreaper saw him win first as a novice in the Broadway Novices’ Chase (the Brown Advisory in new money) when he scored by 20-lengths and he was back in the Cotswolds for a hat-trick of Gold Cup triumphs from 1964-1966. He has a Festival race named in his honour and is a true great of the sport.
3. Golden Miller
Golden Miller holds the record for most Cheltenham Gold Cup wins, having triumphed in the Blue Riband an incredible five times from 1932-1936. He remains the most recent five-year-old to win the race and is the only horse ever to land the Gold Cup and Grand National at Aintree in the same season.
2. Tiger Roll
Tiger Roll is famous for his back-to-back Aintree Grand National wins in 2018 and 2019, but he is also a five-time Cheltenham Festival winner and a true beacon of versatility. He won the Triumph Hurdle in 2014 and three years later landed the National Hunt Cup when it was still a true four-miler. He then added three Cross Country wins intertwined with his Aintree heroics, as he reinvented himself and became the darling of the racing public.
1. Quevega
Quevega is the first and only horse to win the same race at the Cheltenham Festival six years on the trot, having made the Mares’ Hurdle her own prized possession from 2009-2014. Willie Mullins’ mare often made her seasonal reappearance in this race and was a true friend to punters, justifying favouritism six years on the trot but never going off shorter than 4/7.
The leading horses at Cheltenham 2025
There are many elite horses taking part at the 2025 Cheltenham Festival, some of whom will have the chance to put themselves on the list of most successful horses in Cheltenham history.
Chief among them is Galopin Des Champs, the two-time Cheltenham Gold Cup winner who will be attempting to win his third straight crown this year. Willie Mullins’ star will be ridden by Paul Townend once again as the pair look to equal the likes of Best Mate, Arkle and Cottage Rake with a third Gold Cup win.
Constitution Hill is another big name to watch in the 2025 Champion Hurdle. Nicky Henderson’s eight-year-old won the race back in 2023 and is again the favourite in the Champion Hurdle betting this year. Unbeaten across nine races in his career and win three Christmas Hurdle wins and an Aintree Hurdle win to his name, another victory at Cheltenham would cement Constitution Hill as one of the greatest hurdlers of all time.
Energumene won the Champion Chase in both 2022 and 2023, but was denied a bid at a hat-trick through injury in 2024. The Willie Mullins-trained chaser is owned by Brighton & Hove Albion chairman Tony Bloom and is set to return to the Festival this year to bid for a third Champion Chase crown.
For the latest horse racing news and more information about how to bet on Cheltenham 2025, stay tuned to the Betway Insider throughout the Festival.