‘It’s their fun, it’s what makes their heart flicker’: passion for national hunt racing leaves British rivals out in the cold

Cheltenham has made several changes to races at its festival in an attempt to boost the competitiveness of the action on the track, but there is one long odds-on shot over the four days that is still reliably rock‑solid. The 2025 festival will be the 10th anniversary of the last season when British trainers saddled more winners at the meeting than their Irish counterparts and Ireland is no bigger than 1-9 to extend its winning streak into a second decade.

As an annual celebration of Irish culture and achievement on foreign soil, the Cheltenham festival now feels inked into the calendar as firmly as the St Patrick’s Day parade in New York. Yet it is a situation that would have seemed unthinkable at the turn of the century, when Ireland’s return of three wins at what was then a 19-race festival was pretty much par for the course.