There have been some remarkable races in Cheltenham Festival history, but none more mind-boggling than the Champion Hurdle of 2025.
Constitution Hill, the odds-on favourite, clipped the hurdle at the fifth flight, landed awkwardly, and dismounted jockey Nico de Boinville.
The crowd barely had time to process it before defending champion State Man — well clear at the last, the race seemingly at his mercy — fell at the final flight, leaving the door open for 25/1 outsider Golden Ace to stay on up the hill and win by nine lengths.
Forty minutes before that carnage, Willie Mullins had been sending Lossiemouth out for the Mares’ Hurdle — the safe option, the odds-on shot, the race she won at a canter.
A year later, she seized her chance to step out of the shadows, eviscerating all-comers for a resounding and redemptive triumph over old foe Brighterdaysahead to claim a maiden Champion Hurdle triumph. Online betting sites made the mare the one to beat back in March, and the way-too-early ante-post odds for the 2027 showpiece have followed suit.
The horse racing at Bovada odds saw her go off as a 7/5 favourite this year. But what’s the early billing nine months out from 2027? Let’s take a look.
Lossiemouth — 5/2
Let’s be honest about what this market is asking you to do. At 5/2, you are backing a horse to win the Champion Hurdle for the second consecutive year, having never been beaten at Cheltenham across four visits, with a trainer who just ran her in the race for the first time at the age of seven — and won it by six and a half lengths.
That’s quite the show of faith in the most dominant mare in recent National Hunt history.
The season started for Lossiemouth with a nineteen-length win in the Morgiana Hurdle at Punchestown in a field of four, before she held off Brighterdaysahead in the December Hurdle at Leopardstown to claim her ninth Grade 1.
Her next race was the Irish Champion Hurdle, in which she started odds-on favourite but was beaten into second place by Brighterdaysahead. The form book being reversed at Cheltenham — emphatically, definitively — was not an accident.
She jumped into the lead at the second last and readily asserted early in the straight, a couple of lengths clear on the approach to the final flight and impressively extending that advantage up the run-in.
She will be eight by the time of the 2027 renewal. She is young enough at seven to think she might be able to emulate Quevega, who won here six seasons running.
The question isn’t really whether she can win again — it is what would have to go conspicuously wrong for her not to.
Old Park Star — 16/1
Old Park Star failed to win any of his three bumper starts when trained by Paul Nicholls, but was unbeaten in his outings over timber for Nicky Henderson.
In the Grade Two Rossington Main at Haydock, it quickly became apparent that Hurricane Pat was struggling to keep up the gallop, and Old Park Star headed up the Haydock straight with a double-digit advantage, winning by an easy eighteen lengths.
He then scored by a length and a half from Sober Glory, with Mydaddypaddy a nose back in third, to land Henderson his sixth Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.
But it was Henderson’s words afterwards that turned this from a result into a conversation. “Constitution Hill was obviously freaky when he won it, and then your Altiors and Shishkins went on to jump fences,” he said, “and I would imagine that will be next year’s game for this horse.”
Before the Festival, he had been even more direct: “I think there’s more to come and he’ll be a fantastic chaser next season.”
Old Park Star now stands at the exact crossroads where the most talented novice hurdlers of the modern era have consistently turned right, away from the Champion Hurdle — toward the Arkle, toward the fences, toward the races Henderson has always said are built for horses like this. Altior went that way. Shishkin went that way. Both became legends.
Henderson’s comments in the build-up to the 2026 Festival suggested the horse still has a lot of growing up to do and that he wouldn’t really come into his own until next year.
The 16/1 reflects genuine talent. It also reflects a bet on Henderson reversing a decision he has publicly mapped out.
Mydaddypaddy — 14/1
Four career races when he arrived at Cheltenham in March. He had won his bumper by eleven lengths at Huntingdon, won his hurdling debut with minimum fuss at Carlisle, and then scored by seven lengths at Haydock — travelling smoothly, making one slight error, eased to the line.
On Boxing Day at Aintree, sent off the 8/13 favourite for the Grade One Formby Novices’ Hurdle, he lost his unbeaten record to Idaho Sun in a race affected by low sun, with obstacles removed in the home straight. Dan Skelton pointed, fairly, to the absence of hurdles as a factor that stripped away his horse’s clearest weapon.
At Cheltenham, as the hill approached, it was Mydaddypaddy who loomed and attempted to throw down a challenge — but he was unable to outdo Old Park Star. There was a moment on the run-in when it looked like he might get there. He didn’t.
By Walk In The Park and out of Debdebdeb — a dam who won on the Flat, over hurdles, and over fences — the breeding speaks of class.
One of his main attributes over hurdles is his slick and fast jumping, and a tall, useful-looking sort, he’s very much in the mould of a chaser. If Skelton points him at fences — and there are compelling reasons to think he will — the 14/1 odds disappear.
If he stays over hurdles, you’re backing a five-year-old with five career runs to become the best two-miler in training inside a year. Possible. Not probable.
