ANY rational person in racing will have empathy for the challenges facing clerks of the courses across the board - and that pressure is amplified tenfold when overseeing ground conditions for the sport’s biggest National Hunt meeting.

Nobody is doubting the task at hand for the team at Cheltenham each season, but the 2026 fixtures at Prestbury Park will hardly be reflected upon as a favourable chapter for the racecourse. After the discovery of a hole in the home straight on Trials Day in January (later attributed to a collapsed drain) and controversially quick ground conditions for the Festival in March, it capped a forgettable spell this week when the cancellation of their remaining three fixtures in April was announced.

“Cancelling the fixtures will allow work on a significant part of the home straight to begin immediately and give the racing surface time to recover for the start of the 2026/’27 season,” a statement from The Jockey Club noted. It added that “the course would benefit from work being carried out while there was still moisture in the ground to aid recovery and to minimise any potential impact on the start of next season.”

Whether the track deserved all the criticism it received for its management of the hole discovery situation in January has been the subject of debate, but nobody could argue that the amateurish photo finish quality for the race run immediately after was anywhere near good enough for 2026. It was nothing short of a farcical print, poor daylight or not.

Likewise, it’s difficult to say that horses with a preference for a sound surface simply shouldn’t be accommodated at the Festival if nature leaves the ground on the dry side. However, when figures of Willie Mullins and J.P. McManus’ stature came out so vocally in their impression that conditions were unsuitable for premier National Hunt horses, you need to sit up and take proper notice.

While preferences for ground can be subjective, race times are typically not. As was flagged up by pundit Gavin Lynch in the aftermath of this year’s Festival, the 2026 Champion Bumper’s time of 3 minutes 47.94 seconds was the fastest for the race in 12 years. On the same card, the Queen Mother Champion Chase (3 minutes 51.84 seconds) was noted to be the quickest in 10 years.

Even the opening Supreme Novices’ Hurdle on Tuesday was the second fastest renewal in the last decade (3 minutes 51.36 seconds) - only slower than the freakish, course record-shattering display from Constitution Hill in the same event back in 2022. Plain and simple, it all points to unusually fast conditions at play.

Time analysis

Timeform’s post-race analysis of any meeting provides a time-based reading as to what the ground was according to the clock, as opposed to the opinion of the clerk of the course. The ratings group felt the hurdle and chase tracks on Tuesday (old course) and Friday (new course) were good to soft, according to the cards’ times - and nobody should have any complaints once that moisture is underfoot.

However, their analysis for the Wednesday (old course) and Thursday (new course) meetings indicated we were dealing with all-round good ground. There was no mention of soft in their description, and that is where you can understand how the concern would have kicked in from connections weighing up whether they should take part.

Now, there weren’t a host of non-runners that followed the high-profile Fact To File withdrawal from the Ryanair. The vast majority still lined up. Still the whole episode raises the question of what should be the target ground for major fixtures like this.

It has been well proven that the faster the ground, the higher the risk of injury, and the official BHA instruction (as of last year, at least) is that National Hunt tracks “should aim to provide good ground, and no firmer than good to firm”. Is there a case for the goalposts being adjusted to a target of good to soft for jumps meetings instead? In the face of soaring temperatures last spring, for example, Punchestown watered to start each of its five days on yielding ground (hurdle and chase tracks). That felt like the Co Kildare track’s aim.

Whether horses could feel the effects of decent ground is a query many would have held following Cheltenham, and Gordon Elliott’s comments on the Nick Luck Daily Podcast a fortnight ago made for interesting listening; albeit he was not critical of anyone in the Cotswolds over the ground provided and instead felt his own planning would likely have to adapt going forward.

“The ground is a big factor now,” said Elliott. “A lot of the horses we have are a bigger type of horse, and it looks like the ground at Cheltenham is getting drier every year, which isn’t always ideal for the type of horse we have.

Recovery reaction

“I walked the track every day this year - as I do every year - and the ground is definitely better drained. It’s getting quicker every year. It’s something we’re going to have to adapt to.

“A lot of our novices came home a bit sore, a bit shoulder-y. Our bumpers horses too. For me, that’s the one concern. I’m not saying ground is too good or too bad [from a racing preference perspective] - everyone has got to make their own decisions on what they like - but, for me, no horse should come home from Cheltenham sore.

“It’s definitely more the case this year than other years. I don’t think we’ve ever had a problem before. This year, we definitely had five or six horses come home a bit shoulder-y, but they’ll be okay.”

Monitoring how the Cheltenham runners of 2026 fare into the rest of the spring will be a theme worth following. We should get an early steer of that at Fairyhouse this weekend. Oldschool Outlaw takes her chance as favourite in the Grade 1 Irish Stallion Farms EBF Honeysuckle Mares Novice Hurdle on Sunday, though Bambino Fever - from the same Cheltenham contest - was an interesting absentee at declarations.

Reflecting on her disappointing Cheltenham showing, Patrick Mullins told the Racing Post earlier this week: “The ground probably was one of the factors, but I think she ran too bad to just blame the ground. She came home stiff and sore and obviously didn’t run her race, but that can happen.”

The outcome of Cheltenham’s remedial drainage work will be judged next spring. Much more quickly, we’ll have an idea if there’s any immediate downside for those reappearing on the back of their Festival outings.