Heading into the 2026 Cheltenham Festival, superstar mare Lossiemouth had been offered the easy path to a Prestbury Park hat-trick and politely told them where to stick it. The back-to-back Mares hurdle winner instead opted for the big one, the Champion Hurdle. And she wouldn't disappoint.
As soon as the decision to race in day one's showpiece race was made, online betting sites immediately installed Rich Ricci's grey filly as the frontrunner. One can bet on horses at Bovada, and the American bookie positioned her as the clear 7/5 favorite to reign supreme. But as we saw with Constitution Hill 12 months ago, the frontrunner tag means nothing in the Champion Hurdle.
Lossiemouth's Perfect Run
Lossiemouth, wearing first-time cheekpieces, Paul Townend in the saddle, and the pair of them in perfect harmony as they rounded the last before mounting that famous charge up the hill. Six and a half lengths. Four Festival wins from four starts.
The eighth mare in Champion Hurdle history.
The cheekpieces were Townend's idea - floated one morning on the gallops after a piece of work that made Willie Mullins go quiet in that way of his. "He sees more than if people were studying videos for hours," Townend said. The headgear sharpened her focus; suddenly, the race Mullins had been mulling over looked winnable. The open division. Not the Mares'. Greatness, not comfort. Rich Ricci had a long night before Tuesday—his words—but came out the other side with his second Champion Hurdle winner, exactly ten years after the first.
Lossiemouth joins a pantheon spanning 87 years. Just eight mares. Ninety-seven runnings. Geldings have lorded over this division for decades—and yet, eight times, a mare looked at the boys, shrugged, and quickened away from them.
African Sister, 1939
The story starts on 7 March 1939, and it starts with a Piggott—though not the one you're thinking of. Keith Piggott, father of Lester, nursed African Sister home three lengths clear of Vitement in a field of 13, the clock reading 4:13.6, the crowd at Prestbury Park watching the first mare in history conquer the Champion Hurdle at 10/1. Trained by Charles Piggott, owned by Horace Brueton, she was no fluke: she returned the following year and finished second to Solford, beaten a length and a half, proof enough that her 1939 triumph wasn't just fortune smiling on a lucky day.
Dawn Run, 1984
We would have to wait 45 years for the next mare champion hurdler, and this one they would build statues for. In 1984, Jonjo O'Neill and Dawn Run—trained by Paddy Mullins, the patriarch of a dynasty—won the Champion Hurdle by three-quarters of a length from Cima. She'd matched Desert Orchid stride for stride before the hill told in her favor. She was the 4/5 favorite. She was imperious.
Two years later, she won the Gold Cup. The Champion Hurdle–Gold Cup double: unrepeated, probably unrepeatable. Peter O'Sullevan's voice cracking on commentary—"The mare is beginning to get up"—as she hauled in Wayward Lad up that brutal Cheltenham hill belongs in sport's greatest audio archive. Timeform rated her 173, the highest mark ever given to a jumping mare.
Flakey Dove, 1994
A decade on, a bay mare from a small Herefordshire operation walked into the Champion Hurdle and swept past Large Action at the final hurdle to win by a length and a half. Flakey Dove—ridden by Mark Dwyer, trained by Richard Price, owned by J.T. Price—had gone in as the third-favorite behind Oh So Risky and Large Action. She'd contested 44 races before this moment, winning 14, toughened by Champion Hurdle Trial victories at Haydock and the Cleeve Hurdle as prep sharpeners before claiming the biggest win of her life.
Annie Power, 2016
Ruby Walsh knew what he was doing in 2016, and so did Willie Mullins. The 2015 Mares' Hurdle final-flight fall—Annie Power sprawling on the turf with the race at her mercy, bookmakers exhaling across Britain—had left a wound that only one thing could heal. A year later, Walsh sent her to make the running, quickened three out, and demolished My Tent Or Yours by four and a half lengths, to secure redemption and end a 22-year mares' drought.
Epatante, 2020
Barry Geraghty didn't complicate it. Four years on from Annie Power, the Irish jockey bowled along in front on Epatante, Nicky Henderson's French-bred superstar, JP McManus's colors doing what they do at the Festival—making favorites look like certainties. At 2/1, she demolished the field, Henderson collecting his fourth Champion Hurdle, Geraghty riding what many considered the clinic of his career.
Honeysuckle, 2021 & 2022
Two Champion Hurdles. Twelve Grade One wins. An unbeaten streak that reached 15 races and made bookmakers wince and Henry de Bromhead smile. In 2021, Rachael Blackmore became the first female jockey to win the Champion Hurdle, driving Honeysuckle six and a half lengths clear of Sharjah at 11/10; in 2022, she came back, went off 8/11, won by three and a half lengths, and the roar that greeted her cresting the hill was the kind that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck even four years on.
Golden Ace, 2025
Here's where racing reminds you it writes its own scripts. Constitution Hill—sent off at 1/2, the racing world expecting a statement—fell at the fourth-last. Reigning champion State Man, cruising six lengths clear at the final flight, fell with the race in his pocket. Through the carnage trotted Golden Ace, Lorcan Williams keeping his nerve, Jeremy Scott's 35-horse Exmoor operation suddenly, improbably, winning the Champion Hurdle by nine lengths at 25/1.
"I think you have to thump me because I'm not sure this isn't a dream," Scott said—and you believed every word.
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