Cheltenham’s November Meeting is where the jumps season’s big names usually make their first serious move. Course form counts for plenty here, which is why anyone weighing up horse racing betting for the three days will find the same names cropping up on the racecards. Some of the meeting’s best stories belong to old horses who came back and did it again.
Cyfor Malta, four years apart
Cyfor Malta won the meeting’s Gold Cup handicap chase in 1998 as a five-year-old, ridden by AP McCoy for Martin Pipe. Four years later he won it again.
On 16 November 2002, the nine-year-old carried top weight of 11st 9lb and was sent off at 16/1. Barry Geraghty brought him home seven lengths clear of Poliantas in a field of 15, giving Pipe his sixth win in the race. When Racing Post looked back in November 2024, shortly after Cyfor Malta died aged 31, nobody had won the race twice since.
Half Free and Bradbury Star
Half Free was the first horse to win the race in consecutive years, landing it in 1984 and 1985 under Richard Linley for Fred Winter. He came back again in 1986, aged 10, and was beaten only two lengths by Very Promising while carrying a 5lb penalty.
Bradbury Star repeated the back-to-back feat for Josh Gifford in 1993 and 1994. They were the last two wins of his career, and the second came by a head from Second Schedual, who was receiving 13lb.
The race had dual winners before them too. Fortria won it in 1960 and again as a 10-year-old in 1962. Gay Trip won it for Fred Rimell in 1969 and 1971, and in the year between he won the Grand National.
Jonbon and the Shloer Chase
Jonbon’s first win at Cheltenham came in the 2023 Shloer Chase, on the final day of the meeting, for Nicky Henderson and Nico de Boinville. He won it again in 2024, which put him alongside Gauvain, Fox Norton and Nube Negra as the race’s only dual winners.
In 2025 he went for a record third win as the 5/6 favourite. His jumping let him down in wind and rain, and he finished second, 15 lengths behind Dan Skelton’s L’Eau Du Sud.
The defeat was not the end of him. He won the Clarence House Chase at Ascot in January 2026 under James Bowen. In August, Henderson named the Shloer and the Tingle Creek as his first two targets of the 2026-27 season, with Jonbon now 10 years old.
Eldorado Allen and the veterans’ chase
The meeting has a race built for old favourites: a veterans’ handicap chase over two miles and four furlongs, open only to horses aged 10 and older. Every one of the eight runners in 2025 was 10 or 11.
Eldorado Allen won it at 13/2, aged 11, making most of the running under Brendan Powell. He beat Henderson’s Mister Coffey by four and a half lengths, as the joint-favourites, Gunsight Ridge and Fugitif, finished fourth and fifth.
The win came five years after Eldorado Allen won a Grade 2 at the same meeting for Colin Tizzard, and it was his first success since the Denman Chase at Newbury in the 2021-22 season. It was also his last. He fell in the Topham Chase at Aintree in April 2026 and died from his injuries in August, aged 12, having won six of his 42 races.
