Fact File: Cheltenham Festival Queen Mother Champion Chase - (2026)

Updated: 02/03/2026

The Queen Mother Champion Chase is a Grade 1 race held at the Cheltenham Festival in March

The race is open to horses aged five-years-old and upwards

It is typically run over 1 mile 7 furlongs and 199 yards, or ‘about 2 miles’

The race is run on Cheltenham’s Old Course and comprises 12 steeplechase fences

First run in 1959, it was then known as the National Hunt Two-Mile Champion Chase

The inaugural running was won by Quita Que, ridden by Bunny Cox and trained by Dan Moore

The race was renamed the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 1980, to commemorate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday

The oldest horse to win was Skymas, whose second successive victory came in 1977 at the age of 12

Badsworth Boy is the only horse to have won the Champion Chase three times (1983, ‘84, ‘85)

Pat Taafe and Barry Geraghty are the leading jockeys in the race’s history, with five wins each

Arkle’s trainer Tom Dreaper has the best record, with six winners. His most famous winner is arguably Flying Bolt (1966)

In 2001, a replacement for the Champion Chase was run at Sandown, as the Cheltenham Festival had been cancelled due to a Foot and Mouth disease outbreak

Edredon Bleu won the race, winning by a short head, as he had done when winning the Champion Chase the year before

Crisp won the Champion Chase in 1971 by 25 lengths, two years before his heroic defeat by Red Rum in the Grand National

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