The Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle is a Grade 1 race over about 2 miles 5 furlongs on Wednesday of the Festival. It’s the intermediate-distance championship for novice hurdlers, sitting between the Supreme (2m) and the Albert Bartlett (3m). Recent winners like Envoi Allen, Bob Olinger and Sir Gerhard have all gone on to bigger things over fences.
Recent Winners
| Year | Winner | Trainer | Jockey | Age | SP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Impaire Et Passe | W P Mullins | P Townend | 5 | 5/2 |
| 2022 | Sir Gerhard | W P Mullins | P Townend | 7 | 8/11 |
| 2021 | Bob Olinger | Henry de Bromhead | R Blackmore | 6 | 6/4 |
| 2020 | Envoi Allen | Gordon Elliott | D N Russell | 6 | 4/7 |
| 2019 | City Island | Martin Brassil | M P Walsh | 6 | 8/1 |
| 2018 | Samcro | Gordon Elliott | J W Kennedy | 6 | 8/11 |
| 2009 | Mikael D’haguenet | W P Mullins | R Walsh | 5 | 5/2 |
| 2008 | Fiveforthree | W P Mullins | R Walsh | 6 | 7/1 |
| 2007 | Massini’s Maguire | P J Hobbs | R Johnson | 6 | 20/1 |
Key Trends
Age profile: Six-year-olds have won 6 of 9 renewals. Five-year-olds account for 2 wins and there’s a single seven-year-old winner in Sir Gerhard (2022). The standard profile is a six-year-old with a solid novice campaign behind them.
Favourite record: The favourite has won 5 of 9 renewals (56%), with a fairly short average SP of about 3/1. This has been a good race for market leaders, though the sample is relatively small at 9 editions.
Trainers: Mullins has 4 wins from 18 runners. Elliott has 2 from 7. De Bromhead, Brassil and Hobbs each have 1. Henderson’s 0 from 7 is notable by his absence from the winner’s enclosure.
Going: No edition has been run on Good ground in our sample. Good to Soft accounts for 4 winners, Soft for 4, and Heavy for 1 (Sir Gerhard in 2022). The race has consistently been run on winter ground.
What the Data Says
This is a small sample — just 9 editions — so all trends come with that caveat. Still, a few things are clear enough.
Mullins has won nearly half the renewals (4 of 9), and his runners have placed 10 times from 18 — a 56% place strike rate. If he runs something here, it’s almost always competitive.
The quality of recent winners is impressive. Envoi Allen, Bob Olinger, Sir Gerhard and Samcro were all top-class horses who went on to compete at the highest level over fences. That speaks to the Ballymore being a genuine championship race rather than a stepping stone.
The favourite’s 56% win rate is strong, suggesting the market reads this race well. City Island at 8/1 in 2019 and Massini’s Maguire at 20/1 in 2007 are the only winners outside single-figure prices, so outsiders rarely win.
With the race seemingly not being run in some intervening years in our data (2010-2017), it’s hard to draw sweeping conclusions. What we can say is that in recent renewals (2018-2023), the race has been dominated by short-priced horses from the big yards.
All Cheltenham Festival races are run at Cheltenham racecourse. See our Cheltenham course guide for trainer and jockey statistics, going analysis, and betting angles.