On the eve of the Cheltenham Festival, which starts tomorrow (Tuesday) and ends on Friday, Nicholas Godfrey identifies ten top-level flat trainers - all of them G1 winners – to have left their mark on jump racing’s Olympics since the war.
Okay, so these are the rules. Plenty of trainers (and fewer jockeys) have landed major races both on the flat and over jumps, but what we want here are those who are much better known for their exploits on the flat than over jumps yet have still managed success at the Cheltenham Festival.
It isn’t necessarily a straightforward choice – Vincent O’Brien, for example, was a totally dominant force over jumps in the early stages of his career before concentrating on the flat. However, the latter arena is where his legend was truly written, so he qualifies, whereas five-times champion jumps trainer Ryan Price does not, and neither does Tingle Creek’s trainer, Tom Jones, a 12-time Cheltenham winner. They never bettered their NH reputation on the flat – a remark that also applies to Michael Dickinson. Not that it is his fault – it wouldn’t be easy for anyone to better the Gold Cup ‘Famous Five’.
Proper dual-purpose trainers are also disallowed, so there is no place for Desert Orchid’s trainer David Elsworth – although Joseph O’Brien does get in – while others, such as Mick Quinlan and David Arbuthnot, deserve enormous credit for their place on the list of trainers who have enjoyed success at both Royal Ascot and jump racing’s Olympics. But generally speaking, they had nearly as many runners over jumps as they did on the flat, so they don’t really fit the requirement of being a primarily flat trainer.
Ian Balding
One Cheltenham Festival win
Former royal trainer Ian Balding’s name will forever be associated with the equine legend Mill Reef, one of the greatest horses of the 20th century, who won the Epsom Derby, the Eclipse, the King George and the Arc during a memorable 3-year-old campaign in 1971. Having retired in 2002 to hand over the Kingsclere licence to son Andrew, he is the leading figure in a notable racing dynasty also featuring his late brother Toby, one of the few trainers to saddle winners of jump racing’s big three, the Grand National, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Champion Hurdle.
Ian, too, was a passionate supporter of jump racing – he rode in the Aintree Foxhunters aged 54 – and his triumphs in that sphere were headed by Crystal Spirit, who won the G1 Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle under Jimmy Frost at Cheltenham in 1991. Like Mill Reef, the gelding carried the well-known black-and-gold silks of New York philanthropist Paul Mellon.
Mick Channon
One Cheltenham Festival win
The story of how former Southampton and England footballer Mick Channon carved out a successful second career as a leading trainer on the flat is well documented. Nevertheless, despite regular G1 triumphs from the likes of Piccolo, Bint Allayl and three-time Arc runner-up Youmzain, he was by no means a natural choice to take over owner Tim Radford’s jumps string when Henrietta Knight gave up training. Knight, though, was his next-door neighbour and Channon threw himself into the new discipline to the extent that he produced Mister Whitaker to run down Rather Be close home in a thrilling finish to the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase under future champion Brian Hughes in 2018.
“Who said Mick Channon couldn’t train a jumps horse?” said an ecstatic Radford, whose company Timico sponsored the Gold Cup that year. “What a man! He can score goals but he can also train winners.” The owner-trainer pair have Mister Whitaker plus stablemates Glen Forsa and Hold The Note in handicap chases this week.
James Fanshawe
Three Cheltenham Festival wins
James Fanshawe has been stationed at historic Pegasus Stables in Newmarket – built by legendary champion jockey Fred Archer in 1884 – for 30 years. He says that Archer’s ghost haunts the place, though he hasn’t seen him since he gave up drinking! Principally concerned with the flat, Fanshawe’s G1 winners include top sprinters Society Rock and The Tin Man, star miler Soviet Song and Audarya, who became the trainer’s first Breeders’ Cup winner in 2020.
Fanshawe, though, is well versed in jump racing and learned his trade with multiple champion David Nicholson. Though he steadfastly refuses to take more than his share of credit for the exploits of Kribensis when he was Michael Stoute’s assistant, Fanshawe has a quite remarkable record from only a limited amount of jumpers in three decades of training, having won the Champion Hurdle twice, with Royal Gait (1992) and Hors La Loi III (2002). A third festival success came his way with the JP McManus-owned Reveillez in the Jewson Novices’ Handicap Chase in 2006.
He has barely saddled a jumps runner anywhere for ten years and hasn’t had a winner since Lurcher at Lingfield in January 2013 – and even that was a NH flat race.
Barry Hills
One Cheltenham Festival win
In a long career before his retirement in August 2011, Barry Hills trained more than 3,000 winners including over 50 G1 winners in Europe. They included ten Classics in Britain and Ireland and an Arc with Rheingold (1973). Now 83, he has always loved Cheltenham and usually attends a day or two; he also trained a few jumpers now and then, among them top dual-purpose horse Nomadic Way, who won the BonusPrint Stayers’ Hurdle on his fourth visit to jump racing’s mecca in 1992 – under now-flat trainer Jamie Osborne, in the famous green, blue and white silks of Hills’s longtime sparring partner Robert Sangster.
“I’ve waited a long time to get a winner at this meeting,” Hills said. “In fact, Nicky Henderson rode a winner for me the day Midnight Court won the Gold Cup in 1978 – but that was when they moved it to April!” A winner of the historic Cesarewitch over 2m2f on the flat, Nomadic Way was top-class over hurdles, winning the Irish Champion Hurdle and finishing runner-up in the blue riband at Cheltenham behind Kribensis (1990) and Morley Street (1991) before he went up in distance. Unusually, he was also a full horse.
Hughie Morrison
One Cheltenham Festival win
Though Morrison specialises in flat racing, he’s always kept a couple of jumpers and his first major success came via subsequent Champion Hurdle runner-up Marble Arch in the Ladbroke at Ascot in December 2001, three months before well-backed Frenchman’s Creek (whom he bred) scored under a typically confident Paul Carberry in what is now the Ultima Handicap Chase. Since then, he’s had nearly 1,000 victories on the flat, among them a pair of July Cups with Pastoral Pursuits (2005) and Sakhee’s Secret (2007). Retains the odd jumps horses, among them Champion Hurdle contender Not So Sleepy, who won the Dee Stakes at Chester in 2015.
Aidan O’Brien
Six Cheltenham Festival wins
Shares more than a surname and a stable – not to mention a multitude of Classic winners and trainers’ titles in both Ireland and Britain – with legendary namesake Vincent (no relation) in that he, too, cut his teeth in the National Hunt sphere. Before he turned his attentions exclusively to the flat, Aidan O’Brien was a five-time Irish champion jumps trainer in his 20s, starting out at his father-in-law Joe Crowley’s Piltown base. He was also champion amateur jump jockey.
He won five races at the Cheltenham Festival before he turned his back on the winter game, four of them with the great Istabraq, the son of Sadler’s Wells who won the Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle in 1997 and the Champion Hurdle in each of the following three seasons. O’Brien’s first Cheltenham triumph came via Urubande in the 1996 Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle; his most recent, officially, came in 2016 with Ivanovich Gorbatov’s Triumph, though his son Joseph was trainer in all but name, having masterminded the victory before he was able to operate under his own name.
Joseph O’Brien
Two Cheltenham Festival wins
Definitely an argument that he is ineligible for this list given the numbers at his disposal over jumps. Yet, even allowing for the seemingly dual-purpose nature of the younger O’Brien’s operation, such is the worldwide success emanating from Owning Hill – an Irish Derby or St Leger here, a Breeders’ Cup and a couple of Melbourne Cups there – that surely few would quibble that he has made the majority of his headlines on the flat.
But not all of them: he was the unofficial ‘trainer’ when Ivanovich Gorbatov won the Triumph in dad’s name in 2016, then opened his own account three years later with Band Of Outlaws (Fred Winter) and Early Doors (Martin Pipe). Young Joseph Patrick is sure to be well represented again this week – before probably going mob-handed at the Irish Lincolnshire meeting at the Curragh on Sunday.
Vincent O’Brien
23 Cheltenham Festival wins
There are obvious reasons why Vincent O’Brien is widely considered the greatest racehorse trainer in the history of the sport: six Epsom Derby winners, six Irish Derby winners, three Arcs and three King Georges high on the list for the man whose genius was the foundation for the Coolmore bloodstock empire. However, such immense influence on the flat was almost a second career for the celebrated master of Ballydoyle, whose record at the Cheltenham Festival is also the stuff of racing legend.
Before Sir Ivor, Nijinsky, Alleged, The Minstrel and El Gran Senor came no fewer than 23 festival successes, among them four Gold Cup and three Champion Hurdles, championship events in which he completed hat-tricks with Cottage Rake (1948-50) and Hatton’s Grace (1949-51) respectively. Remarkably, O’Brien won ten of the 14 divisions of the Gloucestershire Hurdle novices’ championship in the seven years from 1952 (it was split into two every year in those days). He also completed an Aintree Grand National hat-trick from 1953-55 with Early Mist, Royal Tan and Quare Times.
Sir Michael Stoute
Two Cheltenham Festival wins
Alongside the late Henry Cecil, ten-time champion trainer Stoute was the dominant flat trainer in Britain the 40 years around the turn of the century, with more than 100 G1 successes at home plus over 50 more overseas. A haul of 15 British Classics features five Derbys, while his international CV also features victories in the Arc, the Breeders’ Cup (with eight wins, more than any other UK-based trainer), the Japan Cup and the Dubai World Cup. Now 75, Stoute never took the jumps seriously, but that didn’t stop him preparing Sheikh Mohammed’s battling grey Kribensis – a high-class handicapper on the flat, but no better than that – to win the Triumph Hurdle in 1988 and the Champion Hurdle itself two years later. Just imagine what he might have done if he’d ever been really trying!
Dermot Weld
Three Cheltenham Festival wins
International pioneer Dermot Weld has won major races on four continents, ridden a winner as an amateur on a fifth, and been a 21-time champion trainer on the flat at home in Ireland, where he holds the all-time record for races won. With more than 4,200 victories to his name altogether, the 72-year-old was the first and only European trainer ever to win a leg of the U.S. Triple Crown (Go And Go’s Belmont in 1990), the first European trainer to win the Melbourne Cup (with Vintage Crop 1993 and again with Media Puzzle in 2002) and the first to win at the Hong Kong International Races (Additional Risk 1991). He’s won 16 Classics at home and a Derby in England with Harzand; he fulfilled a notable ambition when he finally landed his first Breeders’ Cup race with Tarnawa in last year’s Turf.
Though much diminished in recent years, he used to maintain a significant NH presence – witness three festival winners in Rare Holiday (Triumph 1990), Silver Concorde (Bumper 2014) and Windsor Park (Baring Bingham Novices’ Hurdle 2015). Even Vintage Crop ran at Cheltenham, coming sixth to Granville Again in the Champion Hurdle in 1993, not even eight months before his ground-breaking win at Flemington.
Honourable mentions
Several other trainers now better known on the flat deserves a mention. Idiosyncratic veteran Mick Easterby won the 1000 Guineas with Mrs McArdy in 1977 – just over 13 months after he took the Triumph Hurdle with Peterhof. His nephew Tim is also a Classic winner on the flat (Bollin Eric, 2002 St Leger) with several G1 successes to his name – and festival success from Barton (1999) and Hawk High (2014). Nigel Tinkler, who rarely saddles a jumps runner these days, also has two Cheltenham winners (The Ellier 1987 and Sacre D’Or 1993).