THE CHAMPION Hurdle is the feature race on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival. It runs over two miles on the Old Course, and it has a habit of producing moments that people talk about long after the season ends. For anyone who follows horse racing betting, it’s also one of the most unpredictable races on the calendar. The last five years alone have given racing fans a back-to-back champion, one of the most dominant performances the race has ever seen, and one of the biggest shocks in its history.
Honeysuckle 2021 and 2022
Honeysuckle won the Champion Hurdle in 2021 and again in 2022, both times ridden by Rachael Blackmore for trainer Henry De Bromhead. She was already an exceptional mare before she arrived at Cheltenham, but those two wins confirmed her as one of the best hurdlers of her generation.
At her peak, Honeysuckle had gone 16 races without defeat. That kind of record at the top level of National Hunt racing is almost impossible to maintain, and she did it while taking on the best horses in Britain and Ireland. Her 2021 win made Blackmore the first female jockey to win the Champion Hurdle. A year later, she came back and did it again.
Constitution Hill 2023
Nicky Henderson trained Constitution Hill to win the Champion Hurdle in 2023, and the manner of it stopped people in their tracks. He started at 4/11, one of the shortest prices the race has ever seen, and he won by nine lengths. Jockey Nico de Boinville barely moved on him. It was the kind of performance that makes even seasoned racing fans sit up.
Constitution Hill had been unbeaten in five starts before that day and went on to make it 10 wins on the bounce. It looked like he could dominate the division for years. He was that good.
State Man 2024
With Constitution Hill absent through illness in 2024, State Man took his chance. Willie Mullins trained him, and Paul Townend rode him, the same partnership that has become a fixture at the top of the sport.
State Man started at 2/5 and won with authority, giving Mullins another Champion Hurdle to add to a long list of Festival successes.
Golden Ace 2025
The 2025 Champion Hurdle is the one people will be talking about for a long time. Constitution Hill went off at 1/2. State Man was in the field. Both failed to finish. The race was left wide open, and into that gap came Golden Ace, a mare trained by Jeremy Scott in Somerset, ridden by Lorcan Williams at 25/1.
None of them had won the Champion Hurdle before. Not the trainer, not the jockey, not the owner. It was one of the most unexpected results the race has produced in decades, and it followed a pattern that Cheltenham keeps repeating: build up the favourite, then pull the rug.
— Three of the last five Champion Hurdles have been won by mares, which is rare for a race historically dominated by male horses. Whether that continues in 2026 is one of the more interesting subplots heading into Festival week.
Article written by Ellie Collins
