Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle – Champion Day

There are two races at the Cheltenham Festival confined to four-year-olds only, and the juvenile handicap hurdle is the first of them.

On Friday, the Triumph Hurdle is the Grade One for youngsters, and those not quite good enough for that level will often find themselves here.

Two miles in trip, it’s a race that, due to the age of the horses, usually attracts flat runners that have gone jumping, or French recruits who are new to the UK.

With this profile for horses, and the small experience they have, it’s often a fascinating betting heat, a volatile market and a race where we see plenty of gambles. Some land, some don’t, but there’s plenty prepared to take their chance.

The race is one of numerous races that was added to the Festival rota back in 2005, when the decision was made to add an extra day to proceedings and turn it from a three day meeting into a four day one.  It was moved from Ladies Day to Champion Day for 2021 to make room for a new Mares’ Chase on Gold Cup Day (with the Grand Annual Chase moving to Ladies Day in the old Fred Winter slot)

It was one of only a handful of races during the Festival that was not sponsored. Instead it is dedicated to the memory of Fred Winter, who won seventeen races at the Festival as a jockey and twenty-eight more as a trainer of horses. He died in 2004 and the race was named for him.  However that changed in 2019 when Boodles began sponsoring the race and there have been numerous sponsors since.

Race Facts

If you’re sharp on your spotting of race names then you’ll have noticed that this one is for juvenile novices. That means that it’s only open to horses aged four that had not won a race before the start of the season. It lasts for two miles and half a furlong and has eight hurdles that jockeys will need to guide their horses over. It’s run left-handed on the Old Course and is a handicapped race.

The prize money for the race amounted to an impressive nearly £80,000, with over £45,000 going to the winner.  This is a good race to look for each-way bets given it usually carries a big field and has been known for long odds winners, such as Jeff Kidder winning at 80/1 in 2021.  Indeed, the average odds for the winner of this race since it started are in just under 21/1 with only 14% of favourites winning.  In it’s early years this was a race for Mares’ with the girls winning four of the first seven running’s, however, since 2012 no mare has won.

Previous Winners

Race Trivia

Obviously no horse has won this race more than once, with the very fact that they’ve won it previously then precluding them from taking part in the future as it’s a race for novices. Even if that wasn’t the case, it is a race for four-year-olds, so they’d be a year older than that the next time the race came around. There are no such restrictions in place for the jockeys, but to date only two have managed more than one win and they are JJ Slevin with two wins and Mark Walsh with four victories.

Interestingly, only one amateur jockey has won the race and only one woman has done so. What makes it so interesting is that it’s the same person that ticks both boxes, Miss Nina Carberry. Horses and jockeys might not have won the race more than once but the same is not true of trainers. Paul Nicholls is the joint-second most successful trainer in the race, having won it three times in 2010, 2015 and 2016. Joseph O’Brien has also now won this three times (2019, 2024 & 2025). Gordon Elliot is the only other trainer to have won it more, with victories in 2013, 2018, 2020 and 2023.

When the race was first run back in 2005 it was classed as a listed event, gaining Grade 3 status four years after its inauguration.  In 2022 it was converted to a Premier Handicap as part of changed by the BHA to convert all Grade 3 handicaps to the new system.

Created in 2005 When the Festival Moved to Four Days

The juvenile handicap was introduced at the Cheltenham Festival in 2005, the year organisers decided to add an extra day to the meeting. Of course, that left a need for more races on the calendar, and it was agreed that a second race for juveniles should be added.

At the time of its creation, there was plenty of worry in racing that it would impact the number of runners in the Triumph Hurdle, but both races have always managed to attract good fields.

When the race was added to the calendar, in order to try and give it some history, the race was named after Fred Winter, a Cheltenham Festival great. He won 17 races at the festival as a jockey and then added a further 28 more winners during his training career. Winter died in 2004, so he was an obvious candidate for a race in his memory, which was held when more were created less than a year later.

Irish Dominance

In recent years, the Irish have completely dominated this race, and it seems every year, they’ve got horses lined up that are incredibly well handicapped, and they go on to bigger and better things.

The Irish generally fare well overall on Cheltenham day 1, and this race has played its part in that success.

Ireland have won this race for the last nine years, a run that started in 2018 with Veneer of Charm for Gordon Elliott and continued through to 2026, when Saratoga won it for Padraig Roche.

Coincidentally, that was the second winner for Roche from the last five years in this race. Gordon Elliott and Joseph O’Brien have also won the race three times during the nine-year dominance for Ireland.

Two Four-Year-Old Races on Different Courses

As already mentioned, the horses that win this race are generally very well handicapped, and it’s not too uncommon for them to go from this handicap to Grade One racing next time out.

2022 winner Brazil and 2025 winner Puturhandstogether both went straight to the Aintree Grade 1 juvenile race a few weeks after their Cheltenham handicap success, and both ran well to finish third in the Grade One.

However, if you are comparing runners from the handicap to the Triumph Hurdle, then there’s one important point to note. These two are both at Cheltenham, but ran on different courses, with the old course used for the handicap, and the new course used for the Triumph.

The course layout is different, the distances are slightly different, and the times will definitely be different. So, when you’re comparing races, this is not a like-for-like form comparison.

From a racing fan’s perspective, it would be much easier for the formbook if these two races were run on the same course, and even better if they were run on the same day.