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The 2024 Breeders’ Cup World Championships is due to be held at Del Mar Racetrack in Southern California in early November and, as is customary, will be a two-day, season-ending spectacle, featuring the crème de la crème of thoroughbred talent not just from North America but from around the world .

The Breeders’ Cup was, in fact, the brainchild of visionary thoroughbred pioneer John R. Gaines, who on April 23, 1982 announced plans for a year-end championship day of racing, at a major venue, in an effort to sell the sport to the general public. The inaugural Breeders’ Cup – a one-day, seven-race affair, but nonetheless worth $15 million in total prize money – was duly staged at the now-defunct Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, California on November 10, 1984.

The Breeders’ Cup has since been staged annually at various iconic venues across North America, all bar one of which have been in the United States, and in 2007 was extended to two days. The current programme features 14 Grade 1 races, in a variety of disciplines and age ranges, on dirt and turf, each worth $1 million and, collectively, worth $28 million. The so-called Breeders’ Cup Challenge series consists of qualifying “Win & You’re In” races across the United States and around the world, each offering automatic, free entry into the corresponding Championship race. In Britain, for example, both the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot offer automatic entry into the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

Now in its forty-first year, Breeders’ Cup World Championships have evolved into a two-day, 14-race extravaganza, worth $34 million in purses and awards. Of all 14 races, the most prestigious and valuable is the Breeders’ Cup Classic, run over a mile and a quarter, on dirt, open to horses aged three years and upwards and worth $7 million in total prize money. Indeed, the Breeders’ Cup Classic arguably rivals the Kentucky Derby, which, despite recent increases in prize money, is still worth only $5 million, as the most prestigious American horse race.

Notable winners of the Breeders’ Cup Classic down the years include Cigar, Curlin, Zenyatta and the American Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. The only horse to have won the race twice, though, was Tiznow, trained by Jay Robbins, who prevailed as a three-year-old in 2000 and as a four-year-old in 2001.

Supplemented for a not-insignificant $360,000 for his first attempt, at Churchill Downs, the son of Cee’s Tizzy bravely held off the so-called “Iron Horse”, Giant’s Causeway, to win by a neck. A year later, he headed to Belmont Park where, under tight security in the wake of 9/11, he edged out the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Sakhee, who was making his dirt debut, by a nose. Boston-born Chris McCarron, who retired from the saddle the following June, with 7,141 winners and $264 million in total prize money to his name, rode Tiznow to victory on both occasions.

Not to be confused with the Grade I listed building in Highclere, Hampshire, as far as horse racing is concerned, Jackdaws Castle is a state-of-the-art training establishment in the village of Temple Guiting, in the heart of the Cotswolds, in Gloucestershire, South West England. Jackdaws Castle was purpose-built by millionaire property developer and racehorse owner Colin Smith in the early nineties and owned by his company, Ford Farm Racing.

The original occupant was the late David Nicholson, who, as a salaried employee, went on to become Champion National Hunt Trainer twice, in 1993/94 and 1994/95, before his retirement in 1999. Richard Phillips succeeded Nicholson, but, in late 2000, Irish billionaire John Patrick ‘J.P.’ McManus confirmed that he had purchased Jackdaws Castle and that Jonjo O’Neill, with whom he had already enjoyed a lengthy relationship, would be relocating from his previous base in Penrith, Cumbria, where he had trained for 14 years.

O’Neill has remained “King of the Castle” ever since, famously sending out Don’t Push It to win the Grand National in 2010 Synchronised to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 2012, both for McManus. However, since May 2024, Jonjo O’Neill, 72, has shared the training licence at Jackdaws Castle with his youngest son, AJ, who has a 29% strike rate as an amateur jockey, but had long harboured an ambition to step up from his previous position as assistant trainer to his father. Father and son have made a promising start, saddling 21 winners from 167 runners, at a strike rate of 13%, in 2024/25 so far, at the time of writing.

At the time of writing, Jockey Club Racecourses (JCR), which owns Cheltenham Racecourse, has recently announced a raft of changes to the Cheltenham Festival, with the aim, it says, of making racing “more competitive and compelling”. Arguably the most contentious change comes to the oldest race run at the Festival, the National Hunt Chase. The traditional “four-miler”had already been shortened by two furlongs following a controversial renewal in 2019, which also saw changes to the qualification criteria for horses and jockeys.

However, what was previously one of the most important amateur races of the season has not only lost its Grade 2 status, having been downgraded to a 0-145 novices’ handicap, but will no longer be confined to amateur jockeys. Since 2020, when the most recent changes were implemented, the National Hunt Chase has attracted 14, 12, 6, 10 and 7 runners, but the decision to allow professional jockeys to ride in the race has been variously described as “bitterly disappointing”, by the Amateur Jockeys Association (AJA), and a “backwards move”, by trainer Willie Mullins.

Elsewhere on the Festival programme, the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase, which was promoted to Grade 1 status in 2014, has been discontinued and replaced by a Grade 2 novices’ limited handicap chase, also run over the intermediate distance of two and a half miles. The Cross Country Chase also reverts to its original handicap status, albeit a limited handicap with a 20lb weight range, after a series of uncompetitive renewals.