Trends analyst Matt Tombs is back with his first article of 2026, which examines the changing impact of Christmas and DRF on Cheltenham…
As punters we’re always looking for new angles to give us a betting edge. As well as the financial benefit there is something joyous in finding an angle into a race that the market hasn’t cottoned onto. That feeling that you’ve got an edge on your fellow punter.
Typically such angles come from new ideas – but they can be factors that are well known, which were therefore previously accurately priced into the market – but are evolving such that they’re now an underestimated factor. A nuanced change that is easy to miss.
I think one such change is the changing shape of the jumps season, especially in Ireland, which has changed how we need to interpret form from the Irish Christmas Festivals and DRF.
In the earlier part of the century jumps racing was a winter sport. Plenty of the best horses, especially novices, began in October, those others that weren’t injured generally started in November. The main season ran to Cheltenham with much of the subsequent racing being end-of-term fare.
That’s a generalisation – there has always been a wide divergence in terms of which part of the season different trainers target. For example, Gordon Elliott got going early and targeted a lot of his best horses at Down Royal at the end of October and in consequence his horses have often been over the top by the Punchestown Festival. Earlier in the century Noel Meade had a similar modus operandi. By contrast, Willie Mullins typically started his horses later and in consequence more of his horses have been able to peak again at the Punchestown Festival.
However, it’s fair to say that there is much more focus on the spring now. Punchestown is a key target for many horses now rather than an after-thought. The programme in Ireland encourages this as the split of Grade 1s from last season illustrates:
14 of those 35 Grade 1s, (40%), were run on the 20th April or later. Only 5 (14%) were run before Christmas. In addition, the prize money can be skewed towards the spring races. For example, there are three Open Grade 1 chases at around two miles in Ireland. Solness won the Paddy’s Rewards Club Chase at Leopardstown at Christmas and the Dublin Chase at DRF but those two wins brought his connections less prize-money than Marine Nationale secured for winning the Punchestown Champion Chase.
Willie Mullins is the obvious ‘spring focused’ trainer but the angle here is that his method is evolving in a way the market isn’t yet accurately factoring in. My gut feel is that Willie has, over the last couple of seasons, made another conscious step-change to start his horses even later and/or further from peak fitness – even when the autumn is very wet.
By way of illustration, in his Sporting Life column last season he said before Kopek Des Bordes’ hurdling debut on the 26th December that, “We’ve been keeping him for Christmas.” Historically it would have been unthinkable to have a novice hurdler, who’d had one race in their life and was fit and well – and deliberately not run them until after Christmas.
Consciously or sub-consciously some other trainers are slightly shifting their methods in response. The result is that some of the Christmas Grade 1s are weakened because the best novices are running in maidens hurdles or beginners chases at that stage. Others are less reliable form as the horses are further from peak fitness then than they used to be.
This doesn’t only relate to the Christmas Festivals and DRF. For example, there’d be another column’s worth of analysis in examining the prospects of novices like El Cairos and Leader d’Allier who will arrive at the Festival off just 2 starts in maidens – but here my question is:
If we need to look differently at the Christmas and DRF form than we did historically – which horses should we be focusing on this year?
The big one for me is Majborough. I think that in the Hilly Way Majborough was, (looking at that race in isolation,) a ‘victim’ of Willie’s even more spring focused approach. I think he needed the run badly rather than it just being the case he’d come on a fair bit for it, as would have historically been the case. Then, because he needed more practice jumping, Willie unusually ran him at Christmas just 20 days later. Again I don’t think he was primed – he was there for experience.
So we had a very high profile horse arriving at DRF with seasonal form that made him look a bit disappointing – with an obvious debating point, (his jumping,) to solidify that impression in punters’ minds.
All of that was valid to an extent but what I don’t think therefore got enough attention was that he would be much fitter and primed at DRF. With the fitting of cheekpieces and reversion to forcing tactics working the jumping oracle, I think the fitness element is being underestimated.
The debate now is whether the cheekpieces will work again, was the Dublin Chase just a one-off when everything fell right on the day etc. Again, those are valid questions – and the uncertainties of a Champion Chase, (10 of the 13 odds-on shots this century have been beaten,) is important context for those betting in the race.
But Majborough isn’t odds-on, he’s 2.68 and the titleholder, who he has just beaten 19l, Marine Nationale is 3.5. Whilst there are plenty of reasons to think the pair will finish closer together in the Champion Chase it’s a huge gap to actually turn round. Too much is being attributed to Majborough’s two runs before the turn of the year – and not enough to his scintillating performance in the Dublin Chase which he was primed for.
The Irish Gold Cup is slightly different in that the first 2 home ran in the King George not the Savills Chase – but the Christmas -> DRF -> Cheltenham principle remains. Both Fact To File and Gaelic Warrior look primed to peak at Cheltenham. The question is in which races?
I’m open-minded but my one strong view is that Willie will want an A-teamer in the Ryanair. The race looks there for the taking and it would be out of character for Willie to want both in the Gold Cup when he doesn’t have another leading Ryanair contender.
Willie decides where the Ricci horses run but has to negotiate about the McManus horses. My hunch therefore is that Willie will wait to see what the outcome of the Fact To File debate is – and run Gaelic Warrior in the other race, (Galopin Des Champs now being an unlikely Gold Cup winner). If I’m right about their being split up then they are candidates for related contingency doubles. I can see them going off a fair bit shorter than their NRNB prices, especially whichever runs in the Ryanair.
Gordon was open this autumn that his horses would need their first run more and he was tweaking his method to try and get them to train on further into the spring. His method is subtly changing too.
Brighterdaysahead is slightly different in that she had a setback and so was making her seasonal debut in the December Hurdle at Christmas. Nevertheless I was struck by how conservatively she was ridden against Lossiemouth given the latter’s fantastic turn of foot. I felt it was very much a sighter, whereas historically Gordon might have primed her for that Grade 1, first run of the season or not.
In the Irish Champion Hurdle Brighterdaysahead was a completely different proposition under very different tactics. She’s a mare with a high cruising speed, who jumps and can keep galloping – a strong stayer in a fast run 2m. Ridden aggressively she ran the finish out of Lossiemouth who is best showing her turn of foot in a steadily run race.
It’s unlikely they will meet at Cheltenham but if they did I would be strongly with Brighterdaysahead’s DRF form not Lossiemouth’s Christmas form – whereas many punters are viewing it as a 1-1 score-line with both mares having an equal chance should they meet again in the spring.
Henry de Bromhead only had 9 runners at DRF. You often hear that he doesn’t target DRF with his Cheltenham horses but in fact 50% of his 20 Festival winners in the 8 years since DRF began ran at Leopardstown in February. That’s a slightly higher percentage than Willie Mullins and significantly higher than Gordon Elliott or Gavin Cromwell.
Henry looks a bit lighter on Grade 1 contenders this year but don’t underestimate a couple of his DRF runners, Waterford Whispers and Downmexicoway, in the Festival handicap chases. (I’m open-minded about their targets – both are novices who are eligible for the non-novice handicaps having run at least 4 times over fences.)
Henry’s Festival runners often improve hugely at Cheltenham and are regularly heavily backed in the run-up to the meeting. Last year Bob Olinger was 21.0 for the Stayers Hurdle a week before and won at 9.0. It’s worth keeping an eye on market moves for any of his runners in the last few days, the aforementioned pair being potential examples.
Punters have always had to wrestle with the issue of which horses have peaked during the winter and which will improve a lot at Cheltenham. But I think training methods are continuing to evolve and we are in the midst of another step change, which has subtle consequences for analysing form for the Festival. One element of that is that I’m placing more emphasis on DRF and less on the Christmas form.
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