The story
Cheltenham Festival in Cheltenham
The most prestigious meeting in National Hunt racing, held over four days each March at Prestbury Park, Cheltenham, since the event settled there permanently in 1911. Its centrepiece, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, first run in 1924, remains jump racing's most coveted prize, with total prize money second only to the Grand National.
Cheltenham Festival in its current annual form dates to 1911, when the National Hunt Committee reached an agreement with the Steeplechase Company allowing the National Hunt Meeting, previously a touring event moving between different towns each year, to settle permanently at Cheltenham's Prestbury Park racecourse rather than continue rotating around Britain.