hen I first discovered horse racing, in 1982, the Cheltenham Festival was viewed as something of a battle royal between the champions of two nations. How many races would go to the Irish and how many to the home team?

In those days the country in which the horse was trained was the only obvious way of answering that question but in 1988 a change occurred that made a new type of scoring system possible.

The nature of that new feature was such that it would still be some years before the extra tally could be calculated and it is only in the past two decades that these figures can be produced easily.

Before 1988 the names of all foals born in Ireland and Britain looked the same in that there was nothing to identify the country in which they were born. With the addition of IRE and GB suffixes their origins became apparent.

And what has become clear since the turn of the century is that the majority of runners and winners at the Cheltenham Festival are horses who were born in Ireland.

Had there been suffixes before this time then there would have been an expectation that IRE and GB would be the major contributors, but in more recent years the growing strength of the French National Hunt breeding programme has been very apparent, and so it is unlikely to be a surprise to more than a few that it is FR, and not GB, that is the second most frequently seen ‘surname’ at the festival.

It should not be forgotten that the suffix merely represents the country in which the horse was born, and so it does not necessarily mean that the horse was conceived there or has a pedigree reflective of that country’s bloodlines, but when it comes to the Irish- versus French-bred runners, most have had pedigrees that do match national expectations.

SUBLIMITY

The 2007 Champion Hurdle hero Sublimity (FR) is an exception as he is a son of the late Lanwades Stud ace Selkirk and out of a Miswaki mare from the family of Group/Grade 1 stars De La Rose, Upper Nile, Spartacus and Blazing Speed, so has a pedigree that is neither National Hunt nor French.

In the past 10 years only five different suffixes have been carried to victory at the festival, and of the three horses born in Germany one is a son of the outstanding Irish flat stallion Montjeu.

The trio born in the USA are all flat-breds by North American stallions, and one of them is a half-brother to an Epsom Derby hero.

It is now more than a decade since there were winners who were born in Poland, New Zealand or Japan, but they and others could always get back on the scoresheet in the future.

From 2006 to 2015 there have been 260 races run at the Cheltenham Festival attracting a total of 4,334 runners. Of these, 2,227 (51.4%) have carried the IRE suffix and 1008 (23.3%) have been born in France.

Indeed these two countries have supplied 74.6% of all Cheltenham Festival runners during that decade and the year-to-year fluctuations in these figures have been both small and, mathematically speaking, insignificant (see Table 1).

Of course there is a difference between just providing runners and actually getting winners and when you look at the number of Irish-bred and French-bred horses who have won at the festival then you find that the Irish notched up 141 (54.2%) wins compared to 75 (28.8%) for the French (see Table 2). The next largest total is 38 (14.6%) for the GB horses.

The Irish and French numbers may look a little bigger than the percentages that might have expected from their respective numbers of runners but, mathematically speaking, the differences are not significant.

When you combine the figures you find that horses born in these two countries have accounted for an astonishing 83.1% of all races won at the Cheltenham Festival over the past decade.

So how do the numbers look when you break them down by type and grade of race?

In those 10 years there has been a total of 26 Irish-bred winners of the shorter hurdle races (under two and a half miles) but only 16 French-bred scorers in that category (see Table 3).

More eye-catching is that 49 chases of three miles or further have been won by Irish-bred horses compared to only 10 for those carrying the FR suffix.

There are many factors that could account for that, including the numbers that actually ran in these events, the ages of those horses and, of course, their pedigrees, and a similar caveat applies when looking at the breakdown of Irish-bred versus French-bred winners of the graded races (see Table 4).

In the case of the different race distances it is striking that the numbers of Irish-bred and French-bred horses who win the mid-range events over hurdles and fences, and those who win the shorter chases, are evenly matched.

Does this mean that horses who have those suffixes have an equal chance in those contests but not in other events?

No.

Given the larger number of IRE suffixes compared to the number of FR ones that appear at the festival, does this close match on wins mean that the French are actually better as they came from smaller numbers of runners at the meeting?

No.

There are simple tests that can be run to compare proportions and determine whether or not there might be a significant difference present, but such testing would not be appropriate here.

Not only is the dataset small, but it is compromised by the fact that some of those wins represent multiple instances of the same horse. For example, Quevega accounts for six of those French-bred scores in the mid-range hurdle category.

It would also be necessary to compare win totals while looking only at the total numbers who ran in those specific types of events, rather than overall festival figures.

What can be presented, therefore, is no more than the bare descriptives, and while these do paint a picture of two countries dominating over all others at the festival, they cannot be used for any sort of reliable predictions.

The 10-year trend suggests that around half of all the races (13-15) at the 2016 Cheltenham Festival will again go to horses carrying the IRE suffix (especially in the 3m+ chases and the shorter Grade 1 events), with around a quarter to a third of them (6-10) being won by those who were born in France but there is no magic pedigree formula here for selecting winners.

Whatever the numbers, however, 2016’s Cheltenham Festival looks sure to be another exciting addition to the meeting’s great and colourful history.