About Cheltenham Festival

The 2012 Cheltenham Festival runs over 4 days, starting on Tuesday 13th March and finishing on Friday 16th March. It's one of the biggest meetings in the National Hunt racing calendar, and has prize money that's second only to the Grand National. This four day festival has a special competitive edge to it as lots of the best British and Irish trained horses race against each other, the extent of which is relatively rare during the rest of the season. The festival is also very popular with Irish visitors, due in some part to the Irish affinity with horse racing, but also due to the fact it usually coincides with St Patrick's Day, and so you can guarantee a good party atmosphere at the racetrack. Cheltenham is often noted for its atmosphere, most notably the "Cheltenham Roar", which refers to the enormous amount of noise that's generated by the crowd as the starter raises the tape for the first race of the festival.

The first Cheltenham Festival was held in 1902 at Prestbury Park, Cheltenham, which is still the same venue for the festival today. It was in 1904 that the first National Hunt Steeplechase was introduced to the festival, a race which would become known as the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The Gold Cup was the first of the festivals four Championship races, with the Champion Hurdle being introduced in 1927, the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 1959, and finally the Stayers Hurdle, which was first run in 1972.

Until 2005, the Festival had traditionally been held over the course of three days, but this changed with the introduction of a fourth day, meaning there would be one championship race on each day, climaxing with the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday. To ensure each day would still have six races, seven races were added bringing the total to 26 races overall.