Rachael Blackmore delighted the crowd by increasing her Cheltenham Festival tally to 25 wins with a double on day three of the 2025 fixture today (13 March) – the most notable being in the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle.
Bob Olinger, who went off at odds of 8-1, took the day’s feature race. This was the third Cheltenham Festival Grade One win of his career – he has previously been successful in what is now the Turners Novices’ Hurdle (2021) and the Turners Novices’ Chase (2022).
Robcour’s 10-year-old got the better of 7/4 favourite Teahupoo, who won this race last year and is in the same ownership, to take the honours by 1¾ lengths.
“Rachael was brilliant on him – she gave him a super ride,” said winning trainer Henry De Bromhead. “I’m delighted for the horse – he’s incredible.
“He had such a reputation a few years ago when things didn’t work out as well as we thought, but to see him come back and do that is amazing. I’m delighted for everyone involved, especially David Roche, my assistant at home, who would take a bullet for this horse. He adores him.
“He is such a dude and he likes the attention and he deserves every bit he gets. He comes alive here and he obviously just loves it here.”
Rachael said that she is “very lucky” to ride such horses.
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“He was brilliant – he has so much speed and was able to use it there today. We went a good gallop and he was still able to pick up off the back of it.
“He’s unbeaten around here, he’s a very, very good horse and we were very hopeful coming here, but for him to do it is just fantastic.”
Teahupoo’s rider Jack Kennedy said there there were “no excuses” for the Gordon Elliott-trained horse finishing second.
“Maybe if the ground was a shade slower it would have taken the sting out of the other lad [Bob Olinger] a little bit. Bob Olinger is a horse with loads of ability and he’s just put it all together today.”
J P McManus’s The Wallpark, trained by Gordon Elliott and ridden by Mark Walsh, finished 9¾ lengths down in third.
A sad post-script to the third day of the Cheltenham Festival was that Springwell Bay, an eight-year-old ridden by Jonjo O’Neill Jr, trained by Jonjo and A J O’Neill and owned by Mrs Gay Smith, was fatally injured in a fall in the Jack Richards Limited Handicap Chase.
The Cheltenham Stayers’ Hurdle is a Grade One National Hunt hurdle race, run over three miles with 12 flights of hurdles to jump. The race is held on the third day of the Cheltenham Festival in March and is a massive highlight of the National Hunt season.
Last year’s winner, Teahupoo, was the short-priced favourite to take the victory this year. The Stayers’ Hurdle got under way at 4pm on Thursday 13 March. Here’s everything you need to know about the big race, from this year’s runners and riders, how to watch, to what prize money the winner took home.
When was the 2025 Stayers’ Hurdle?
The race got underway at 4pm on Thursday 13 March.
Who were the runners in the 2025 race?
Horse: Teahupoo | Jockey: Jack Kennedy | Owner: Robcour
Winning-most trainer, horse, jockey and owner of the Stayers’ Hurdle
The all-time leading Stayers’ Hurdle trainer is Paul Nicholls, who has so far won it a total of four times, thanks to Big Buck’s, who is also the horse that holds the most wins in this race (2009-12). The winning-most jockey in the race is Ruby Walsh, thanks to his five wins — all four on Big Buck’s, plus one on Nichols Canyon. And there are two leading Stayers’ Hurdle owners, who both have four wins each. These are the Stewart Family, who owned Big Buck’s and Andrea & Graham Wylie, who owned Inglis Drever (2005, 2007, 2008) and Nichols Canyon.
The history of the Stayers’ Hurdle
The inaugural Stayers’ Hurdle race was run in 1912 at Prestbury Park with £100 (£200 in 1913) prize money to the winner and £10 to the runner-up. It was called the Stayers Selling Hurdle and was a weight for age selling event with the winning horse being sold for £50 after the race. The race was dropped from the Festival programme twice during 1928–1929 and in 1939–1945 but in 1946 it replaced the Spa Hurdle, which was previously run in 1923 and 1942 over two miles. From 1946 to 1967 the Spa Hurdle was run over the same three miles until being renamed in 1972 as the Stayers’ Hurdle.
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Former web features editor, point-to-point editor and digital racing editor
Gemma is an experienced journalist, who was a member of H&H staff from 2014 to September 2025. She is passionate about all equestrian sports, including racing and point-to-pointing. She has enjoyed riding out for top trainers Nicky Henderson and Charlie Appleby and took part in a charity Flat race at Epsom in August 2018. Gemma’s has reported from numerous five-star events around Britain and Europe, as well as European championships.
