Supreme Novices Hurdle Odds
Cheltenham Festival traditionally gets under-way on a Tuesday with the Supreme Novices Hurdle. This all-important opening race starts at 1.30pm and helps to set the electrifying atmosphere that spectators and pundits alike have come to find synonymous with Cheltenham.
Run on the Championship Hurdle Course, the two mile and a furlong spectacle attracts a large field of novice runners. All of whom are competing for the £100,000 prize.
Due to the large field, experience in similar events before making it to Cheltenham often proves vital for the runners. And with 10 of the last 11 winners having ran within 45 days prior to the event, this too could prove a key factor.
Formerly known as the Gloucestershire Novices’ Hurdle, It is the only race at the Cheltenham Festival to have been split into divisions, with 1946 and 1963 seeing no less than three division groups.
The race seems to hold a special kind of luck for the Irish, as it has been won on 38 separate occasions by Irish-trained raiders. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, seven of the last ten winners have been Irish-trained.
The race has seen a variety of times achieved by its runners, but the quickest was that set by Montelado in 1993, who set a blistering pace of 50.6 seconds.
1998 saw French Ballerina coming remarkably close to matching the record with an only slightly less impressive time of 50.9 seconds.
An unusual aura seems to surround this particular race, as it has proved to be elusive for some of the more well-known jockeys over the years, with Tony McCoy being the last Champion jockey to have been successful in his attempt, over a decade ago back in 1999.
The 2010 Supreme Novices Hurdle was won by Menorah, trained by P J Hobbs, who came in at 12/1 odds. He fought a fierce race with Get Me Out Of Here and Oscar Whisky, but ultimately both his rivals made one too many mistakes to steal victory away from the strong 5-year-old.
As for 2011, Cue Card is amassing a great deal of interest as a potential winner, while Dermot Weld’s Hidden Universe also looks poised for great things following his victory at the Punchestown Festival.
