Kingofthefrontier Wins Sharp Novices' Hurdle at 20-1 for John Dawson

A 20-1 outsider called Kingofthefrontier won the Grade Two Sharp Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham on Friday 23 October. The race was due off at 3pm, and the winner was trained by John Dawson in North Yorkshire.

Grade Two is the second tier of jump racing, just below the top grade. A hurdle is a race over low obstacles, and novice races are for horses with limited experience over them. This one was run over two miles and half a furlong, which is just over two miles. A furlong is an eighth of a mile, so the extra half of one is about 110 yards.

The favourite was Dan Skelton's Cooltobecareless, sent off at 13-8. It finished third. The winner beat Nicky Henderson's Planters Punch by two and a quarter lengths, a little more than the length of a horse. The Guardian described the result as a romance-rich return to the course for the festival crowd, and the race was a long way from the usual script.

Conor O'Farrell rode Kingofthefrontier. George Critchley owns the horse. The winner's share of the prize money was £47,552, from a pot of £80,000 guaranteed by the race, according to Racing Post.

For Dawson, this was his third runner at Cheltenham as a trainer. He had sent out six winners from his yard since May 2023 before this afternoon. At The Races called the win the biggest of his training career. Dawson is no stranger to the big days himself. In March 2024 he rode Sine Nomine to win the Hunters' Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, a race for amateur riders over fences.

Skelton had 115 winners in the current jumps season before this race, the campaign that runs from spring to spring. He took the champion trainer's title from Willie Mullins last season. Martin Pipe still holds the all-time record of 243 winners in a jumps season, set in an earlier era of the sport.

Racing on a cold October afternoon rarely feels like a turning point. Still, the scene on the hill at Cheltenham tells its own story: owners, trainers and stable staff who spend early mornings on the gallops, all waiting for a few minutes of running. For the yard in North Yorkshire, a win like this is the kind that stays on the wall for years.

What happens next for Kingofthefrontier has not been announced. Trainers usually decide on the next target in the days and weeks after a big win, and the horse's connections will be weighing up options over the coming weeks.