Big changes made to Cheltenham Festival schedule
The Cheltenham Festival is the biggest meeting of the year in National Hunt racing. It features five Championship races, and it is often the primary target for every trainer, jockey, and owner in the sport.
Organisers have made some changes to the meeting in 2025 in a bid to improve the product and make the races more competitive on the track.
Turners Novices’ Chase
One of the biggest changes to the schedule comes with the Turners Novices’ Chase. The Group One race will now be a handicap contest from 2025. This has been done to improve the field sizes for the Group One races for novices.
Organisers are hoping that trainers will now focus on the Arkle Chase and Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase with their best first-season chasers. Ballyburn is the 5/1 favourite in the horse racing betting odds for the latter following the change in conditions.
The stunning grey GREY DAWNING wins the Turners Novices Chase for a Festival TREBLE for Harry & Dan Skelton!
A British trained 1-2-3… pic.twitter.com/qGI7HzudX7
— CheltenhamRacecourse (@CheltenhamRaces) March 14, 2024
As the horse racing results show, Grey Dawning won the 2024 renewal of the Turners’ Novices Chase. He will now go on to compete in some of the biggest 3m+ chases this season, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup at the 2025 Cheltenham Festival.
Cross Country Chase causes debate
One of the highlights of the Cheltenham Festival for many racegoers is the Cross Country Chase. It is the most unique contest across the four days, as participants take a much different route at the venue, jumping obstacles such as logs, water and ditches.
Tiger Roll wins the Cross Country #CheltenhamFestival wins: FOUR
(Joins select group including Arkle)
Reigning Grand National champion
Prize-money won: £867,282#TheFestival pic.twitter.com/6TuZB70hgJ— Racing TV (@RacingTV) March 13, 2019
This season’s Cross Country Chase will now be a handicap contest which means the best horses in the race will need to carry more weight. This has been heavily criticised by Tiger Roll’s owner Michael O’Leary. He believes this will lead to the highest-rated horses bypassing this meeting for Aintree and Punchestown. Tiger Roll is a two-time winner of the Cross Country Chase and O’Leary has stated it was used as perfect preparation for the Grand National a month later.
The Cross Country Chase, which was abandoned in 2024, will remain on the third day of the meeting and racegoers can still walk on certain areas of the course to get a better view of the race.
Festival experience set to improve
Cheltenham Racecourse have announced a variety of new initiatives that they hope will improve racegoers’ experience from next year. There will be a park and ride system operated from the town centre to the racecourse to limit the traffic to the venue. There is also a new partnership with National Express which will take people to the racecourse from 20 different pick-up locations.
Ticket prices for 2025 have been frozen by Cheltenham Racecourse, while those purchasing a ticket for one day will be given a 20% discount if they buy a second-day ticket (excluding Gold Cup Day).
To improve the experience on the day, there will be more food and drink outlets available from 2025, including an indoor facility with seating. These have been added following feedback from racegoers who attended in 2024.
The 2025 Cheltenham Festival takes place between Tuesday, 11th of March and Friday, 14th of March.
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