The 2024 Cheltenham Festival will open on Tuesday, 12th March with the traditional curtain-raiser, the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. It is a race all punters are keen to win to get off to a good start for the week, and we have delved into the key stats to point you towards this year’s winner.
Age
This is a relatively easy trend to follow for backers in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, as 18 of the last 20 winners have been aged either five or six. The split between those two ages is very slim, with ten winners aged six, and eight aged five.
Only Captain Cee Bee in 2008 and Appreciate It in 2021 have won the race as seven-year-olds in that span, while you have to go back to Like-A-Butterfly in 2002 for a winner aged eight. Though four-year-olds receive an 8lb weight allowance, which saw Fakir D’oudairies go off joint favourite in 2019, no horse of that age has won since Hors La Loi III in 1999.
Age of the Last 20 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle Winners
- 4 – 0 winners
- 5 – 8 winners
- 6 – 10 winners
- 7 – 2 winners
- 8+ – 0 winners
Starting Price
Many may associate the Champion Hurdle with hotpot favourites such as Vautour, Douvan and Constitution Hill, but even two of those great horses were only joint favourites for their respective victories. Only three outright favourites have won in the last 20 years, with Appreciate It being the only odds-on shot to oblige.
Between Go Native’s success in 2009 and Cinders And Ashes’ win in 2012, every winner went off a double-figure price, while no favourite, outright or otherwise, won between Brave Inca in 2004 and Vautour in 2014. The last six winners have gone off at single-figure odds though, with the enigmatic Labaik the last big outsider to win at 25/1 in 2017. Even his odds were comfortably short of Ebaziyan’s 40/1 triumph for the then-less-heralded Willie Mullins in 2007.
Starting Price of the Last 20 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle Winners
- 1/2-Evens – 1 winner
- 11/10-7/2 – 5 winners
- 4/1-6/1 – 6 winners
- 13/2-10/1 – 3 winners
- 11/1+ – 5 winners
Official Rating
With no ratings for Ebaziyan or Brave Inca, there are 18 officially-rated winners to use for our purposes. Taking an average of those leaves a requisite official rating of 147. As a novice hurdle, this is understandably well below an open Grade 1 rating, but still shows that some level of achievement is necessary already.
The Supreme has also become a better race, as the trend is significantly skewed by recent winners. In the last ten years, the average winner has been rated 152, with Altior, Douvan and Vautour already rated 155 by the time of their triumphs. Indeed, the three lowest-rated winners all came prior to 2009, with Arcalis’ 136 rating at the bottom of the pile.
Official Rating of the Last 20 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle Winners
- <140 – 3 winners
- 140-144 – 4 winners
- 145-149 – 3 winners
- 150-154 – 5 winners
- 155+ – 3 winners
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