Paul Nicholls

Paul Nicholls has won the National Hunt Trainers’ Championship ten times and Leading Trainer Award at the Cheltenham Festival six times. Since 2009, Nicholls has had to play second fiddle to the likes of Nicky Henderson, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott at the Gloucestershire course, but victories for Pacha Du Polder in the Foxhunter Challenge Cup and Le Prezien in the Grand Annual Challenge Cup in 2018 took his career total to 43 Festival winners. Consequently, despite some lean years, he remains the third most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival, behind only Mullins, with 61 wins, and Henderson, with 60.

 

Nicholls saddled his first Cheltenham Festival winner, Flagship Uberalles, in the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 1999 and wasted no time in adding his second, and third, Call Equiname in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and See More Business in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Those three winners were sufficient to win him his first Leading Trainer Award and he won again five years later, when Azertyuiop in the Queen Mother Champion Chase was one of four winners for the yard.

 

Nicholls won again in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, with three, four, three and five winners, respectively. In 2007, he saddled Denman to win the RSA Chase and Kauto Star to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2008, Master Minded to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase and Denman to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup and, in 2009, Master Minded to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase again, Big Buck’s to win the Stayers’ Hurdle and Kauto Star to regain his crown in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Of course, Big Buck’s would go on to win the next three renewals of the Stayers’ Hurdle and was inducted into the Cheltenham Hall of Fame in 2018.