Ruby Walsh expects the changes to the Cheltenham Festival programme to bolster competitiveness and field sizes beyond just the four days in the Cotswolds.
A series of significant changes to the Cheltenham Festival race programme have been announced as the track seeks to improve competitiveness at the National Hunt highlight.
From 2025, the two-and-a-half-mile Turners Novices' Chase will be replaced by a Grade Two limited novice handicap chase over the same trip, while the National Hunt Chase, which has been contested by amateur riders, will be open to professionals and become a novice handicap chase for horses rated 0-145.
Jon Pullin, head of racing and clerk of the course at Cheltenham, said: "We have had to acknowledge that due to the restrictions that were previously applied to the race, there was a limited pool of riders available to ride in it, so this looks the right opportunity to open it up to professionals as well.
"Amateur jockeys are a key part of the Festival and we are obviously keen to ensure they continue to have opportunities to ride over the four days. Both the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Handicap Chase and St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase will continue to be restricted to amateurs.
"It is hoped that by creating two novice handicap chases, we will have two competitive races with large fields and encourage the top novice chasers of the season to go down the Graded route in the My Pension Expert Arkle and the Brown Advisory."
The Glenfarclas Cross County Chase will also move from a conditions race to a limited handicap, with Pullin citing the domination in recent years of former top performers such as Delta Work and dual Grand National winner Tiger Roll as the reason for the contest’s return to its initial status.
He said: "In reverting back to a handicap, I think we have the opportunity to make a more competitive race. Numerically, the race performed really well as far as field size is concerned but what we have seen in the last few years is real quality horses, which we do want to see at the Festival, taking part and leading to a race that realistically only two or three horses have a chance of winning."
There are three races restricted to the distaff division at the Festival, with the races introduced as an incentive for owners to keep racing their mares.
The Grade One Mares’ Hurdle and the Grade Two Mares’ Chase have been left unchanged, with a minor adjustment to the conditions for the Ryanair Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle, which will be altered to remove the penalty structure, resulting in a level weights contest and hopes that connections will campaign more widely without the worry of extra weight at the Festival.
An alteration has been made to the Pertemps Final, with all winners of series qualifiers now guaranteed a run proved they are within the weights at the declaration stage, and all entries in non-novice Festival handicaps must now run four times over fences and five times over hurdles.
With an extra run now required, routes for more unexposed horses would need to be adjusted, and Pullin added: "For horses that don’t have the minimum number of runs, there are still the novice options."
The changes are a result of a full review following the 2024 Festival, with attention also focussed on providing "a better experience and value for all visitors".
Walsh, who is the most successful Festival rider in history with 59 winners, was one of those consulted as part of the Jockey Club’s review and expects the decisions will impact the level of competition in March.
He said: "All the changes are geared towards making the races more competitive. The aim is to attract as many of the best horses as possible to run at the Cheltenham Festival and for them to run in the right races.
"Cheltenham is the pinnacle of jump racing and these changes help to maintain that. Of course there will be some people who think these changes go too far and there will be some who think they don’t go far enough. The important thing to remember is that those making these changes have done so in the best interests of jump racing and the Festival."
Walsh pinpointed the handicap changes and the switch in the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle as potentially having a benefit outside of Cheltenham.
He added: "The idea of a handicap is to give everybody a level chance, but unfortunately when you have limited information it is very hard to put the correct mark on some horses. By increasing the number of runs requirement, hopefully you will have more of the right horses in the right races.
"It should also increase competition and field sizes throughout the winter, which can’t be a bad thing."
Paul Nicholls is a 14-times champion National Hunt trainer in Britain and has sent out 49 Festival winners, including four Cheltenham Gold Cups.
He said: "On the whole these changes sound very sensible. Everybody has different opinions and you cannot please everybody at the same time, but I think we have to try to make the racing as competitive as possible as that is what the Cheltenham Festival is all about."
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