Cheltenham’s 2025 Festival turned on two upsets, Golden Ace in the Champion Hurdle and Inothewayurthinkin, added at the last minute, in the Gold Cup.
The Cheltenham Festival ran at Prestbury Park from Tuesday 11 to Friday 14 March 2025, four days that jump racing treats as its own championship season.
The Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup, inaugurated in 1924, is the meeting’s centrepiece. It is a steeplechase of three miles, two furlongs and 70 yards, open to horses of five and older, and it has become the race every jumping stable measures its year against.
Champion Day opened with a shock. Constitution Hill, the odds-on favourite, fell halfway through the Champion Hurdle, State Man fell later, and Golden Ace won at 25-1 for the trainer Jeremy Scott and the jockey Lorcan Williams. Gavin Cromwell had already won the Cross Country Chase on the Wednesday with Stumptown, and the Triumph Hurdle on Friday went to Poniros, a 100-1 outsider and the longest-priced winner in its history.
Gold Cup day brought a second upset. Galopin Des Champs, winner in 2023 and 2024, was bidding for a third, and Inothewayurthinkin beat him by six lengths at 15-2 under Mark Walsh, with Gentlemansgame third. Ahoy Senor had come down earlier in the race and hampered the defending champion. Cromwell trained the winner for J P McManus, and had supplemented him for the race six days earlier at a cost of £25,000. The winner was a homebred and earned his owner nearly £280,000.