Cheltenham Festival 2017 Results

It was another thrilling Cheltenham festival in 2017, with some big wins, surprising losses, a nice introduction for 17 year old jockey Jack Kennedy, as well as a tense few days for Willie Mullins.

Top trainer went to Gordon Elliott, who actually tied with Willie Mullins at 6 wins each, but Elliott won the title based off his three 2nd place runners vs Mullins’ two. One of Elliott’s winners was Cause of Causes, who won the Glenfarclas Chase, making him only the 4th horse is Cheltenham’s history to win 3 different races in 3 successive years.

Mullins did well to catch up to Elliott too, because he didn’t have a winner at all until day 3, but between them they notched up 12 of the 19 Irish trained winners at the festival, meaning it was another victory for the Irish this year.

Meanwhile , Ruby Walsh won top jockey with 4 first place runs, but incredibly, they all came on day 3 of the festival too. Therefore, Ruby Walsh not only won top jockey in a single day, but he became the first ever jockey to win 4 races in a single day at the festival.

23 of the 28 races received a cash injection this year, bolstering the overall prize money on off to a record of £4,305,000, and Jessica Harrington trained, Sizing John, took a large portion of that when he won the Gold Cup – one of three big wins for the horse that year, who would go on to also win the Punchestown Gold Cup having already won the Irish Gold Cup.

There was a huge upset on day 2 when Douvan’s 14 race winning streak came to an end in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. The heavily fancied favourite ended up in 7th place, ruining plenty of betting tickets no doubt, whereas Altior stormed to victory in the Arkle on day one, his 10th victory in an unbeaten run that would continue until 2019.

14th March 2017 – Day One (Champion Day)

15th March 2017 – Day Two (Ladies’ Day)

16th March 2017 – Day Three (St. Patrick’s Day)

17th March 2017 – Day Four (Gold Cup Day)