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Marble Sands won a bumper race
last year, his first season as a novice he didn’t win so gets another go at it.
I thinkGaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Not just “another” season; a horse retains its novice status until the October of the season after its first win.
As an extreme example, Quixall Crossett ran in a novice chase on his 8O something start over fences. Ridiculous!
“Not just “another” season; a horse retains its novice status until the October of the season after its first win.”
Same rule exists in America which can get really silly since our season is March through November. The Mean Queen won 3 open G1s in her championship 2021 season but was still able to run in a novice stakes in September of 2022. Winning a hurdle in open company should make a horse ineligible for novice status imo, it’s a university graduate beating up on schoolkids.
“a horse retains its novice status until the October of the season after its first win.”
That’s not quite correct. The extension to the end of October only applies to a horse that records his first win over hurdles on or after March 1st. If you have your first win anywhere between the first day of the season and Feb 28th (or 29th), then your novice status ends on the final day of the current season.
There have been exceptions made to these rules recently because of the disruptions caused by Covid, but they were one off changes.
But at the extreme, a horse can remain a novice for its entire career if it never manages to win. A famous example was Amrullah, who I think ran about 90 times over many years and never won a hurdle or a chase. I once owned a horse that suffered the disgrace of finishing behind Amrullah when we filled 4th and 5th places in a five runner novice chase at Ascot. The first two were Remittance Man and Morley Street, so heaven knows what eitherof us were trying to prove! Amrullah was by then a maiden ten year old.
After posting that, I realised I wasn’t 100% sure if I’d missed a change, so I checked the current published rules.
And there has been a change, but to alter the extension to the end of October into November. Here’s the current rule:
“for a Hurdle Race, means a horse that has not won a hurdle race (other than junior national hunt hurdle races) run under the rules of a Recognised Racing Authority before the current Jump Season, except that a horse that has won one or more such hurdle races between 1 March and the end of the previous Jump Season will be a Novice until 30 November of the current Jump Season; “
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