What to look out for this season as jumps racing proper clicks into gear

In theory at least, the 2024-25 National Hunt season got under way in early May, but for most punters and fans, the Showcase meeting at Cheltenham, jumping’s spiritual home, on Friday and Saturday this week will be the first significant step on a road that eventually leads back to the Cotswolds in March and then on to Liverpool in April.

Cheltenham features so sparingly on the calendar, with just nine days scheduled before the Festival meeting opens on 11 March, that every afternoon at the track feels precious for the winter code’s devotees.

That first stride into the new campaign, however, may not feel quite so bold and confident this time around. Britain’s National Hunt racing industry is at least twice the size of its Irish counterpart in terms of the number of races and meetings it involves and the prize money on offer, yet it heads into the 2024-25 season feeling even more like the junior partner than it did 12 months ago.

Willie Mullins’s latest – and arguably greatest – achievement yet in adding the British National Hunt trainers’ championship to his 18th title at home set the seal on another sobering season for British yards. Four Irish trainers – Mullins, Gordon Elliott (in fifth), Henry de Bromhead (14th) and Gavin Cromwell (20th) finished in the top 20 in the table, winning a combined total of £6.5m in prizes. It felt like a world in which, to paraphrase Gary Lineker, dozens of trainers spend five months running their best horses and at the end, the Irish always win.

Anything that strays even within hailing distance of a sense of inevitability is a serious problem for an event like Cheltenham’s Festival in particular, which should be a celebration of uncertainty to its core. And as Jonathan Mullin, Horse Racing Ireland’s director of racing, pointed out earlier this year, it is an issue for the Irish too, as “the biggest threat to Irish jumps racing is the demise of British jumps racing”.

At some point, there needs to be some rebalancing of power in the jumping world, and reclaiming the trainers’ title from Mullins would be a good start. The trainer most likely to do so, according to the betting at least, is Dan Skelton, who seemed poised to take over from his former employer, Paul Nicholls, in the spring before Mullins’s late charge through Cheltenham, Aintree and Ayr snatched the crown away.

He has been typically busy over the summer, with more than 300 runners and £550,000 in prizes in the bank already, and is top-priced at 5-4 to remain at the top of the table until the end of the campaign.

Skelton seems sure to have more runners than any of his rivals over the course of the season, as he did last time around. But while Grey Dawning, one of last year’s top novice chasers, is a live hope for next month’s Betfair Chase, he cannot hope to match Mullins in terms of the depth of quality in his yard. No one can, and a key factor in deciding the title race could be the extent to which the new champion is determined to defend his crown.

The early signs, from the point of view of Skelton and his fellow British contenders, Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, are not promising. Mullins did not send a single runner over jumps in Britain before the Showcase last year, whereas this time around, a scattering of his horses have already started popping up in some unexpected locations. Mullins has bagged winners at Fontwell, Worcester, Bangor and Warwick, and while £20,000 in prizes is very small beer, it feels like an interesting statement of intent.

If so, then the 7-4 on offer with one firm for a Mullins repeat could be a steal (and he is odds-on at 10-11 elsewhere). He has the top two in the Gold Cup betting in Galopin Des Champs and Fact To File, and immense strength in depth in every division. If he is going to be beaten, it is likely to require something of a collective revival among leading British trainers and their horses, at the spring festivals above all.

The horse that everyone wants to see back in action is, of course, Henderson’s unbeaten former champion hurdler, Constitution Hill. It is 10 months since his only start of 2023-24, a season that started with an abortive trip to Newcastle for a meeting that succumbed to the weather and then saw him ruled out of defending his Champion Hurdle crown in early March with a virus.

Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle on 30 November is once again the target for Henderson’s stable star, and while his appearances may be relatively few and far between, Constitution Hill is one of the stars that jumping urgently needs to give substance to the first half of the winter campaign.

Henderson endured a miserable festival meeting in March with much of his string seemingly afflicted by the same bug as his stable star. Jonbon, though, rose above it all to bag two Grade Ones in April and will be another key player for a yard which also now houses the recent £1.4m purchase Palladium, this year’s German Derby winner, ahead of a possible tilt at next year’s Triumph Hurdle.

Nicholls, meanwhile, is chasing a major milestone of his own, as a 15th title this season would equal Martin Pipe’s record. He lost a major owner in the summer when Chris Giles dispersed his string, but managed to hang on to Giles’s hugely promising Regent’s Stroll, who will be going over hurdles this year.

Along with Il Est Francais, the brilliant winner of last year’s Kauto Star Chase at Kempton, these are just a few of the names that will be emerging from their summer quarters over the coming weeks. If winning the British title was a huge achievement, defending it is likely to be tougher still, but it will be fascinating and compelling to watch Mullins try.