Fan favourite Rachael Blackmore looks to defend Cheltenham crown

The fans will be back at Cheltenham this week and they will have a new favourite to roar home as the four-day drama unfolds. For 15 glorious years from 2004, “What’s Ruby on?” was the first question on many punters’ minds before any big race at the Festival. Now “What’s Rachael riding?” will be the starting point before the money goes down, as last season’s leading rider at the meeting attempts to defend her crown.

Rachael Blackmore’s six winners at the 2021 Festival proved that sporting history can be made even when there is no one there to remember the moment.

She jumped the final flight in silence on the way to victory on Honeysuckle, the favourite, in the Champion Hurdle, the first by a female rider in one of the meeting’s four feature events. A few dozen people, at most, applauded her into the winner’s enclosure afterwards. Quite unlike any other “I was there” moment, it was a soulless experience that none who witnessed it would ever care to repeat.

It will reboot the Cheltenham Festival in the post-Covid era like little else if Blackmore can retain her top-jockey status this week with 65,000-plus fans in full voice. Better yet if the only blip at last year’s meeting – her decision to ride A Plus Tard and not the winner, Minella Indo, in the Gold Cup – could be rectified 12 months later. After Blackmore’s groundbreaking success in the Grand National last April, again with no spectators in the stands, it is the only one of the National Hunt’s three biggest races she has yet to win.

“It’s probably something that will sink in when you’ve got grey hair and you can enjoy what happened,” she said recently. “I suppose when I came home [from Aintree] and I was driving through my home town of Killenaule and I could see