Supreme Novices’ Hurdle – Champion Day

The traditional curtain raiser of the Cheltenham Festival, the race with the roar, and the start of 28 fantastic contests, the race that kicks it all off is the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

A Grade One contest on the day, one that provides an abundance of clues for the future, and being the first race of the Cheltenham Festival, one that’s got something special about it.

Two miles over hurdles for novice horses, a test of speed and stamina, and a race that’s thrown up many high-class winners over the years.

Originally called the Gloucestershire Hurdle, this race began life in 1946 and back then it was split into three different divisions. That was reduced to two for the 1948 race (it wasn’t run in 1947) and continued in that manner until 1972. In 1974 it gained a sponsor for the first time and was known as the Lloyds Bank Champion Novices’ Hurdle, changing to the title it uses nowadays in 1978 when Waterford Crystal took on sponsorship of it. They remained the race’s sponsor until 1990 and there have been numerous different ones since then.

For 2025 the race was called the Michael O’Sullivan Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in honour of the 24 year old Irish jockey who sadly died at Thurles the previous month.

Race Facts

This Grade 1 hurdle race is run on the Cheltenham Old Course, as all races on Day 1 of the Festival are. It is run left-handed over a distance of two miles and half a furlong, featuring eight different jumps along the way. The Supreme Novices Hurdle is, as the name suggests, open to novice hurdlers that aged four or older.

Four year olds will weigh ten stone eleven pounds, whilst horses over the age of five will be eleven stone seven pound. Both fillies and mares are allowed an allowance of seven pounds.

Previous Winners

Race Trivia

The Irish trainer Vincent O’Brien is widely credited for making the Cheltenham Festival so popular with people from the Emerald Isle; Cottage Rake won the Gold Cup three years running under his training. He also managed to win three successive Champion Hurdles with Hatton’s Grace. Perhaps even more impressive, however, is the fact that he managed to achieve ten wins over an eight year period back when this was known as the Gloucestershire Hurdle and had two divisions to it.

Since the race changed to its current format in 1972 there has been just one trainer to come even close to repeating O’Brien’s achievements. Nicky Henderson has had a good go at it, winning six times since 1986 – there are 40 years between all of those wins too with his last coming in 2026, impressive longevity.  However, it is Willie Mullins with his eight wins who is the most successful trainer of the modern era.

Mullins owes a decent amount of his success to the ability as a jockey of one Ruby Walsh, a man who has also won the Supreme Novices Hurdle six times. His first two wins came on the back of Noland and Al Ferof, both trained by Paul Nicholls. Then he won this race three times in a row on horses trained by Mullins, starting with Champagne Fever in 2013, following it up with Vautour in 2014. on Douvan in 2015 and finally making it home on Klassical Dream in 2019.  Mullins partnered with Paul Townend to take the race by nearly half a furlong with Appreciate It in 2021 and they did it again with favourite Kopek Des Bordes in 2025.

It was, however, Mullin’s biggest rival, Nicky Henderson, who won the opening race of the meeting in 2022 with Constitution Hill ridden by Nico de Boinville.  It was worth a specific mention as he broke the course record with a time of 3 minutes 44.35 seconds.

Rachel Blackmore was up to her usual Cheltenham tricks adding another Festival race to her impressive list in 2024 beating two Willie Mullins favourites to win with the Henry de Bromhead trained Slade Steel.

Dominance from Ireland & Willie Mullins

If you’re trying to find the winner of this contest from the racecard, then the best place to start is often in Ireland.

They’ve dominated the recent history of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, winning the last three in a row, and when you look further back, they’ve won nine of the last 13 renewals.

If you want to narrow things down even further, then the first yard to look at should be that of Willie Mullins. We say this about many Cheltenham races, but the Supreme is one he targets more so than some others.

Mullins last won this race in 2025, with Kopek Des Bordes landing the race at odds on, and he’s responsible for six of the nine Irish winners over the last 14 years.

The Irish have been a dominant force at Cheltenham across the board, and the Supreme is definitely a race they like a lot.

Future Options on Day 1 for Supreme Contenders

One of the best, and sometimes most frustrating aspects of racing, is that when a horse wins a race, we sometimes look over that success, in a rush to talk about what comes next.

We do it naturally, whether we like it or not. When it comes to looking ahead, I think the Supreme is set up perfectly for Cheltenham day 1, because the two most obvious targets for the following year are run on the same day.

Most Supreme horses will stick to two miles, so it’s just a case of working out whether they’ll stay hurdling or go over fences.

As soon as the winner crosses the line, you’ll often be able to get odds on them to win the following year.

For those staying over hurdles, the feature race on day 1 is the Champion Hurdle, and that will be the target for many who run well in the Supreme.

If trainers want to switch to fences, they also don’t need to look far. Second race on day 1 is the Arkle Chase, a two-mile contest for novice chasers, somewhere else that many Supreme runners look to.

While not easy, we have seen horses complete the Supreme/Champion Hurdle double or the Supreme/Arkle double.

The last horse to win the Supreme and then land the Champion Hurdle the following year was Constitution Hill, winning in 2022 and 2023.

You have to go a little further back to find a horse winning the Supreme and then going on to win the Arkle, and that was Shishkin, completing this double in 2020 and 2021.

Nicky Henderson’s Superstar Winners of the Supreme

A final note on the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle to mention some of the big stars in racing who have recently won this contest before going on to bigger and better things.

Two of them have already been mentioned, with Constitution Hill and Shishkin. Both trained by Nicky Henderson, he’s had another recent winner of this race in Altior, who won the 2016 race and then went onto chasing greatness.

There’s an argument to be made that those three are three of the best to come from the Henderson yard in recent times. They’ve gone on their separate paths after this race, but he’s started them all off here.

Henderson hasn’t won the race as many times as Willie Mullins, but if recent history is anything to go by, when he wins it, he wins it with a good one.