The Horses with the Most Cheltenham Festival Wins

Winning once at the Cheltenham Festival is the high point of most jumps careers. Winning there year after year takes a rare mix of talent, soundness and a trainer willing to build a season around four days in March. Anyone looking back through horse racing results from Prestbury Park will find the same few names coming up again and again. These are the horses who made the Festival their own.

Quevega and the Record Six

No horse has won more races at the Cheltenham Festival than Quevega. Trained in Ireland by Willie Mullins and ridden by Ruby Walsh, she won the Mares’ Hurdle six years in a row, from 2009 to 2014.

What made the sequence remarkable was how it was managed. Quevega ran very little away from Cheltenham, often appearing only once more each season, usually at Punchestown. Her campaign was built entirely around one race, and she turned up fresh for it every March. It is a model that other trainers have copied since, though nobody has matched the result.

Golden Miller’s Five Gold Cups

Before Quevega, the record belonged to Golden Miller, who won the Cheltenham Gold Cup five times in a row between 1932 and 1936. The Gold Cup was still growing in stature then, but five wins in the Festival’s biggest race has never been approached since.

He also won the 1934 Grand National, making him the only horse to win both races in the same season. Golden Miller was the first true star of jump racing, and his record in the Gold Cup is the benchmark every great staying chaser has been measured against.

Tiger Roll’s Five Across Three Races

🐅 The Tiger roars again

🏆🏆🏆 Glenfarclas Chase
🏆🏆 Grand National
🏆 Triumph Hurdle
🏆 National Hunt Chase

Tiger Roll is a five-time #CheltenhamFestival winner under @donoghue_keith & Denise Foster https://t.co/fHIcETmeFJ

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) March 17, 2021

Tiger Roll is perhaps the most unusual of all. He won the Triumph Hurdle in 2014, the National Hunt Chase in 2017 and the Cross Country Chase in 2018, 2019 and 2021, while also winning two Grand Nationals. Few horses have shown that range at the top level.

Four-Time Winners

A small group of horses have won four times at the meeting, each in a different way.

Arkle won the Broadway Novices’ Chase in 1963 and then three Gold Cups from 1964 to 1966. Many still regard him as the best steeplechaser ever trained. Big Buck’s won four World Hurdles in a row from 2009 to 2012 for Paul Nicholls, also with Ruby Walsh on board for most of his career.

Altior took a different route, winning the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2016, the Arkle in 2017 and then the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2018 and 2019 for Nicky Henderson. Honeysuckle, trained by Henry de Bromhead and ridden by Rachael Blackmore, won two Mares’ Hurdles and two Champion Hurdles, finishing her career with a win at the 2023 Festival.

Three-Time Champions

GALOPIN DES CHAMPS wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup! 🏆 https://t.co/1fKgF7PtMJ

— Sky Sports Racing (@SkySportsRacing) March 17, 2023

Several other horses won the same championship three times. Best Mate took three Gold Cups in a row from 2002 to 2004 for Henrietta Knight. Badsworth Boy won three Champion Chases between 1983 and 1985, and Inglis Drever claimed three World Hurdles in 2005, 2007 and 2008.

Galopin Des Champs reached three Festival wins by a different route. He won the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle in 2021, then the Gold Cup in 2023 and 2024. Those wins made him one of the most successful staying chasers of the modern era.

What the Great Festival Horses Share

Look at the list closely and some patterns appear. Most of these horses were trained by the most powerful yards of their time, from Tom Dreaper with Arkle to Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson in the modern era. Many were campaigned lightly, with their whole season pointed at Cheltenham.

The track itself is also a factor. The Festival’s undulating courses and uphill finish suit horses that stay well and jump accurately, and a horse that handles Cheltenham once tends to handle it again. That is why the same names keep returning to the winner’s enclosure, and why a repeat winner is often the first place to look when weighing up the odds for a new Festival.