Cross-Country Chase

Race Overview

About the Cross-Country Chase

The Cross-Country Chase is unlike any other race at Cheltenham Festival — a three-miles-six-furlong adventure across Cheltenham's unique cross-country course on the New Course, featuring obstacles unlike anything found in conventional steeplechasing.

The cross-country course incorporates banks, ditches, water features, log piles, stone walls and natural terrain obstacles that test a horse's adaptability, agility and boldness in ways that conventional fences never can. A horse who excels in the Cross-Country Chase is one who combines the basic bravery of a chaser with the curiosity and adaptability of a genuine all-terrain jumper.

The race became famous through Tiger Roll's back-to-back victories, which followed his Grand National success and created one of the most beloved horse racing stories of recent decades. Tiger Roll's Cheltenham cross-country victories captured the public imagination and brought the race to a far wider audience than it had previously reached, cementing its place as one of the Festival's most talked-about events.

Course experience is absolutely paramount in the Cross-Country Chase. Horses who have previously navigated Cheltenham's cross-country course — particularly those who have won at the course's dedicated cross-country meetings earlier in the season — carry an enormous advantage. First-time visitors to the cross-country course face a genuinely steep learning curve.