FEATURE NEW YEAR’S DAY
NEW YEAR’S DAY For many racing fans, heading out to Cheltenham on New Year’s Day is a time-honoured tradition. And those who make the pilgrimage to the Home of Jump Racing are in for a treat, as Nick Seddon explains…
I t may take place during the depths of winter, but there’s more than enough on Cheltenham’s New Year’s Day card to get your heart racing, provided that the mulled wine from the night before hasn’t finished you off. The festive racing season is breathless and this meeting serves as a fitting bookend to King George Day at Kempton Park six days before. Considering that the Guinness pumps will be in full flow from the moment the gates open, some resolutions will be almost certainly broken before the first race. However, if New Year traditions are your thing, the Grade Two Relkeel Hurdle over an extended
two-and-a-half miles is a race that has a habit of providing clues for The Festival. Serving as a ‘halfway house’ between the Unibet Champion Hurdle and the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle, the race is an ideal fit for those looking to test their stamina against a quality field, an assignment that subsequent Stayers’ hero, More Of That, passed with flying colours in 2013-14. And history came rather close to repeating itself last term with the 2022 Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle winner, Marie’s Rock, who was sent off as a 9-4 joint favourite for a repeat success on the back of a six-length victory in this
race, only for a certain Honeysuckle to have other ideas. There is also plenty of excitement elsewhere on the card, particularly in the £100,000 Grade Three Paddy Power New Year’s Day Chase, which Dan and Harry Skelton have won for two of the past three years. Meanwhile, anyone interested in finding a star of the future need look no further than the two Listed events, the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle and the ‘Junior’ National Hunt Flat Race, ensuring the meeting not only caters for all types of racing fan, but also blows away the cobwebs from the night before in the process.
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