Remembering the great Altior and his four wins at the Cheltenham Festival

Unlike some of the other Cheltenham Greats to be covered in this series, Altior’s career is still fresh in the mind.

His retirement was announced by Nicky Henderson only in September 2021 but his achievements, particularly those at the Cheltenham Festival, seem sure to stand the test of time. He ended his career with a record of 21 wins from 26 starts with his greatest claim to fame being that 19 of those victories were gained consecutively, establishing the longest winning sequence in history by a jumper.

Beginning with a novice hurdle at Chepstow in October 2015 – his debut over hurdles – and ending with a third successive win in the Celebration Chase at Sandown in April 2019, that winning streak covered four complete seasons and all four featured a Cheltenham Festival victory as its highlight.

Of course, Altior won big races elsewhere.

Besides the Celebration Chase, he also won the Tingle Creek at Sandown, the Clarence House Chase at Ascot, the Desert Orchid at Kempton and three editions of the Game Spirit at Newbury. His third Game Spirit, in 2020, proved to be the final win of his career and came after he suffered his first defeat over jumps when going down to Cyrname in a grueling 1965 Chase at Ascot when stepping out of his two-mile comfort zone for the first and only time.

Altior will be remembered as a top two-mile chaser but he laid the foundations for that career with an unbeaten novice hurdle season which culminated in victory in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. He was already a course-and-distance winner, having won a Grade 2 novice at the November meeting, and was sent off 4/1 second favourite in what proved to be a star-studded field for the Supreme.

Among those who finished further back were Supasundae and Petit Mouchoir, both of whom went on to win Irish Champion Hurdles, but his closest pursuers were Min and Buveur d’Air, making it one of the highest quality editions of the Festival’s opener.

Min, sent off the 15/8 favourite, came with a big reputation for Willie Mullins and he too developed into a top-class chaser, finishing first past the post in his first five chases before coming up against Altior again at Cheltenham two years later. At the time of the Supreme, Buveur d’Air was very much his stable’s second string but he too proved a prolific winner after that defeat, building his own winning streak of 11 races.

He also went chasing initially but the decision to return him to the smaller obstacles was rewarded by victories in the next two Champion Hurdles. Altior was an impressive winner of the Supreme, having too much speed for Min in the closing stages and quickening clear approaching the final flight to win by seven lengths.

We’ll never know what Altior, rated 167p after the Supreme, might have achieved had he remained over hurdles but there can have been no regrets about his switch to fences the following season. He had four wins in chases behind him when he lined up for the 2017 Arkle at odds of 1/4. That reflected the fact that Altior had already put up a top-notch effort when winning the first of his Game Spirits by 13 lengths, form which would have won him many a Champion Chase (for which he also held an entry), let alone an Arkle.

He duly won as his odds suggested he should, though a falsely-run race masked the full extent of Altior’s superiority over his rivals. He won in a similar manner to the Supreme, jumping the last three lengths clear of the eventual third Ordinary World but really opening up on the run-in to leave that rival 15 lengths behind at the line as Cloudy Dream stayed on for second six lengths back.

Altior’s Arkle came 24 hours before the best chaser in training at the time, Douvan, who had himself won both the Supreme and then the Arkle at the two previous Festivals, started at even shorter odds to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase. But after 14 straight wins of his own, Douvan could finish only seventh having sustained a hairline fracture to his pelvis. Instead, a close finish was fought out by Special Tiara – whom Altior was to beat with a brilliant performance in the following month’s Celebration Chase – and Fox Norton who had been trounced by Altior in the Game Spirit.

Douvan’s stress fracture meant that he’d been absent for a whole year when he ran in the following season’s Queen Mother Champion Chase. Things hadn’t gone smoothly for Altior, either, in the meantime and, after requiring a breathing operation which caused him to miss the Tingle Creek, he was restricted to just one appearance before the Festival when winning the Game Spirit again.

Then, just a couple of days before the Champion Chase, Altior was found to be lame, needing pus to be drained from a hoof and having to pass an examination by racecourse vets to be deemed fit to run. But for that injury scare, he would doubtless have started odds on rather than even money.

The build-up to the Queen Mother Champion Chase had been more straightforward, on the other hand, for Douvan’s stablemate Min. A setback during his novice chase season had ruled him out of a rematch with Altior in the Arkle the year before but he was now the Mullins stable’s main hope against Altior, sent off next in the betting at 5/2 with Douvan at 9/2.

The 2018 Queen Mother Champion Chase therefore promised to be one of the highlights of the whole season and it didn’t disappoint even though Douvan came down in the lead four out when still going with plenty of zest. That still left Altior with Min to beat and he did so by exactly the same margin as in the Supreme two years earlier – seven lengths. Jumping fluently as usual, Altior took the lead soon after jumping the final fence with Min and stayed on strongly up the hill, just as he had done at the two previous Festivals though this time in more testing conditions.

Now the highest-rated jumper in training, Altior joined a select list of jumpers (several more of whom will feature in this series) to have been Timeform Horse of the Year more than once – he had been just the third novice to take the title the previous season.

At the height of his powers, Altior enjoyed a more trouble-free 2018/19 on the way to a defence of his Champion Chase crown as his winning run rolled on. Straightforward wins in the Tingle Creek, Desert Orchid and Clarence House (where he beat two rivals at odds of 1/10) were gained by an aggregate of 30 lengths so Altior looked to have plenty in hand of his eight rivals at Cheltenham when bidding to equal Big Buck’s record of 18 consecutive wins. Four of those beaten in the race the year before took Altior on again, notably Min, who started second favourite again at 7/2 behind Altior at 4/11 with the rest at 11/1 or longer.

In the event, though, Min failed to give his running, finishing only fifth past the post, while Altior himself wasn’t at his brilliant best with his jumping less fluent than usual in the closing stages.

In fact, he gave his supporters a scare as Sceau Royal and Politologue were bang on terms with him jumping the last but even a below-par Altior showed why he was so hard to beat, especially at Cheltenham, as he soon rallied to regain the lead and typically found plenty in the closing stages to register his fourth Festival success by a length and three quarters from Politologue with the same distance back to Sceau Royal in third.

Altior didn’t need to be at his best, either, when beating Sceau Royal again for his record-breaking 19th consecutive win at Sandown at the end of the season. But an annual Timeform rating of 180p for the 2018/19 campaign was the best of Altior’s career as he became Timeform’s Horse of the Year for the third time.

The 2019 Champion Chase turned out to be Altior’s final Festival appearance. His third win in the Game Spirit a month before the 2020 Festival was gained decisively and set up the prospect of Altior bidding for a third Queen Mother Champion Chase which would have matched Badsworth Boy’s feat in the ‘eighties. But days before the anticipated clash with new younger rivals Defi du Seuil and Chacun Pour Soi, Altior showed signs of lameness from a splint problem.

Although declared to run at the 48-hour stage, he wasn’t fit in time and was scratched the day before the race from which Chacun Pour Soi was also a late absentee leaving Politologue to go one better than the year before.

It was the following December before Altior was back on the racecourse and, despite being beaten by outsider Nube Negra in the Desert Orchid Chase, Altior was still reported on course for another crack at the Champion Chase. But for the second year running he had to miss the Festival after a setback just days beforehand; he coughed after exercise and was ruled out after an unsatisfactory scope.

He finished in front of the Champion Chase winner Put The Kettle On when contesting the Celebration Chase at the end of the 2020/21 season but defeat to younger rival Greaneteen signaled the end of Altior’s career.

Top two-mile chasers like Altior provide some of the most exciting action that jumps racing has to offer but as his trainer himself acknowledged ‘A lot of people won’t call him a great horse until he can prove himself over a different distance.’ It was with that in mind that he was tried in the 1965 Chase as a stepping stone towards a possible run in the King George VI Chase. As a two-mile specialist, Altior might not have earned the same fame as if he’d been a Gold Cup horse. For all his brilliance, too, Altior is not even the best two-miler chaser that Henderson has handled – Sprinter Sacre has that honour – and, remarkably, the same stable’s Shishkin currently looks well on course to match Altior’s feat of winning the Supreme, Arkle and Queen Mother Champion Chase at successive Festivals.

Altior’s four Festival wins aren’t a unique achievement either. In fact, immediately after Altior won the 2019 Queen Mother Champion Chase, Tiger Roll joined him as a four-time Festival winner when winning the Cross-Country Chase for the second time and made it five when winning that race again in 2021.

A dozen horses have won at least four races at the Cheltenham Festival, with Quevega holding the record with six wins, all of them gained in the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle.

All that said, as a four-time Grade 1 winner at the Festival – from novice hurdler to fully-fledged chaser – who reached an outstanding level of form over fences and proved impossible to beat anywhere for four entire seasons, Altior fully deserves his place among the Cheltenham Greats.

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