Lulamba didn’t so much win the Game Spirit Chase as survive it. For three-quarters of the race at Newbury on Saturday, Nicky Henderson’s unbeaten novice looked anything but a 11/8 Arkle favourite. He was off the bridle early, not entirely foot perfect at his fences, and turning in you could have got decent odds about him seeing it out.
Then, between the third and second last, Nico De Boinville squeezed and Lulamba responded like a proper racehorse. The acceleration was instant, the jumps at the final two fences assured, and the six-and-a-half-length margin over Saint Segal at the line barely reflected his superiority.
Henderson was predictably measured afterwards. He didn’t need the race, he said, but he needed the experience. “Going with those older horses where they are going to go a proper good gallop is where you are going to learn.”
But there’s a deeper pattern here that casual punters might miss. Lulamba isn’t just any novice following the traditional Seven Barrows prep route. By winning the Game Spirit, he’s walked the same path as two of the greatest novice chasers of the modern era.
The Game Spirit-Arkle Pipeline
Sprinter Sacre did it in 2012. Altior did it in 2017. Both won the Game Spirit at Newbury in February, then won the Arkle at Cheltenham the following month.
The SmartForm database tells the story. Sprinter Sacre arrived at Newbury in February 2012 with an unbeaten record over fences. He won the Betfair Super Saturday Chase (as it was then called) by seven lengths, jumping rivals into submission. Three weeks later, he annihilated the Arkle field by 19 lengths.
Altior followed an eerily similar script five years later. He won the 2017 Game Spirit at Newbury by four lengths, again as an unbeaten novice. At Cheltenham, he made it six from six over fences with an Arkle victory. He’d go on to win 19 consecutive races.
Lulamba is the third horse in fifteen years to arrive at Newbury as an unbeaten novice and leave with the Game Spirit trophy. The previous two didn’t just win the Arkle — they dominated it.
Henderson’s Arkle Empire
If history points to Lulamba, the trainer’s record seals it. Nicky Henderson has won the Arkle Challenge Trophy seven times — more than any other trainer since the race was first run in 1969.
The roll call is impressive: Simonsig (2013), Captain Conan (2012), Sprinter Sacre (2012), Altior (2017), Shishkin (2021), and Jango Baie (2025). That’s three of the last thirteen runnings, and the strike rate gets better when you look at his Cheltenham novice chasers overall.
Since 2010, Henderson has saddled 187 novice chasers at the Cheltenham Festival across all races. He’s won 22 of them — a 11.8% strike rate that towers above the trainer average at the meeting. In Grade 1 novice chases specifically, the numbers are even more striking: 12 winners from 67 runners, nearly one in five.
Why the Game Spirit Matters
There’s a reason Henderson keeps coming back to this race. The Game Spirit is run over two miles on a track that tests a horse’s jumping and speed in equal measure. The pace is relentless — Saturday’s race was strongly run from the start, which played to Lulamba’s advantage once he found his rhythm.
More importantly, it gives a novice the education they won’t get at home. As Henderson noted, running against “seasoned handicappers” who “don’t half teach you” forces a young chaser to jump quicker and think faster. Lulamba made mistakes at Newbury — the occasional awkward jump, the moment of hesitation — but he learned from them. By the end, he was pinging fences.
The data backs up Henderson’s approach. Horses who win the Game Spirit as novices and then run in the Arkle have won six of the last nine Arkles contested by such horses. When those horses are trained by Nicky Henderson, the record is three wins from three.
The Case Against
Not every Game Spirit winner goes on to Arkle glory. Master Minded won the race twice (2008, 2010) but was a two-mile champion, not a novice. Edwardstone won it in 2024 but was already an experienced chaser — he pulled up in that year’s Champion Chase.
The key differentiator appears to be the novice status. Sprinter Sacre, Altior, and now Lulamba all arrived at Newbury with fewer than five chase starts. They were still learning. Edwardstone and Master Minded were established performers.
There’s also the ground question. Lulamba won on heavy at Newbury, but Henderson made clear he believes the horse will be “better on good ground.” The Cheltenham Festival rarely throws up heavy ground in March — good to soft is the typical verdict. If Henderson is right about his charge’s preferred surface, there’s improvement to come.
The Verdict
At 11/8, Lulamba is no value bet. The market has done what it usually does with Henderson novices who pass their prep-race tests — it squashes the price. But the data supports the confidence. Horses who win the Game Spirit as unbeaten novices have an exceptional record in the Arkle. Horses trained by Nicky Henderson at the Cheltenham Festival win at roughly twice the rate of the average trainer.
Put those two factors together, and Lulamba’s price starts to look less like hype and more like a rational assessment of probability. The Game Spirit-Arkle trail has produced two legends of the modern game. On March 10th, we’ll find out if Lulamba can make it three.
Arkle Challenge Trophy — Tuesday, March 10, 2026