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If you were planning a day at Cheltenham before the end of the jumps campaign, think again. The home of National Hunt racing said on Monday it will not stage another fixture until autumn, having taken the unprecedented decision to cancel its three remaining meetings in order to start major drainage works on the home straight over the summer months.
The two-day meeting scheduled for 15-16 April and the track’s traditional season finale, a hunter-chase fixture and concert on 1 May, attracted a combined total of nearly 25k spectators in 2025. That is a long way short of the 56k daily average at the festival this month, but will still represent a significant loss in ticket sales and race-day revenue from food, drinks and betting.
Potential drainage problems were highlighted in January when the final race of the Trials meeting, the last fixture at the course before the festival, was delayed for 29 minutes by the appearance of a hole in the home straight.
The course was thoroughly assessed, with checks including a ground-penetrating radar survey, before the festival, the showpiece event of the track’s season, but Jon Pullin, the clerk of the course, said on Monday that while “drainage improvements are typically carried out at the end of each season, given the scale of this project and the last two particularly dry summers, we have decided to bring this work forward”.
Pullin confirmed that where the hole was discovered is the focus of attention. “Throughout the very wet winter, we have experienced a number of issues on the track,” he said, “and working with drainage experts, we have identified an area that would benefit from being upgraded.
“This will allow us to address the issues we believe contributed to the hole appearing on Festival Trials day and subsequently created challenges in other areas of the track. As a result of this, we moved rail and hurdle positions to ensure we were providing the best surface for both the Old and New courses.”
Jockey Club Racecourses, which operates Cheltenham, said four races from the April meeting will be added to cards at Market Rasen, Warwick and Sandown. The hunter-chase fixture on 1 May will be staged at Warwick on the same evening.
“We did look at contingency plans that might allow us to prioritise this work while also staging our April and May fixtures, but unfortunately it is not feasible to continue racing,” Pullin said. The next card at Cheltenham will be the first afternoon of the two-day Showcase fixture on 23 October.
Guy Lavender, Cheltenham’s chief executive, said the decision to cancel the remainder of the course’s season was one “we gave a great deal of consideration to”.
Lavender said: “While we appreciate racegoers will share in our disappointment at not being able to stage our last three fixtures of the season, it is vital to give the racing surface time to recover and allow our grounds team to prepare the track for October and next season’s jumps programme.”
Lavender arrived at Cheltenham in January 2025 with attendance at the festival meeting in freefall and a mission to address the decline. Attendance at the festival this year was up 3%, while the crowd figures for several days earlier in the season hit record levels.
While the loss of three days’ racing at a track that schedules 16 all year is disappointing, the overall mood at what is, in many respects, the sport’s most important venue is likely to remain positive.
When jumping fans reconvene at National Hunt’s spiritual home in seven months’ time, perhaps on one of those bright October days that often greet the start of the Showcase meeting, the hole in the home straight that caused chaos on a gloomy evening in January should be a distant memory.
