There’s an immense thrill to watching the best National Hunt horses soaring over obstacles, but all punters would agree that the last thing they want is for any of the animals out on the track to suffer an injury of any kind.
A stern test of jumping that is safe and promotes the welfare of the horses is the ideal scenario, and both Aintree and Cheltenham – home to two of the key jumps festivals on UK soil – have revealed plans to make their hurdles races even safer with a new type of hurdle.
Previously, the hurdles at the two venues were made of birch, which is a stiff material without a huge amount of give should a horse clip the top on their way over. When you consider the speeds that the horses travel at during these races, even a slightly off-kilter jump can lead to injury or worse – despite the relative lack of height of National Hunt hurdles.
So, to add an extra safety dimension to races at the two layouts – with the Aintree and Cheltenham Festivals in particular mind, racecourse officials have decided to switch to a more forgiving foam-padded style of obstacle. The data shows that this can reduce the number of fallers by around 11%, while minimising the risk of painful cuts and lesions.
Other racecourses, including Haydock Park, Kempton and Sandown, will follow suit in time for the 2026/27 season.
It’s the latest in a long line of safety changes at Aintree in particular, with a series of alterations were made prior to the Grand National in 2024.
Cheltenham Festival: Hurdles Fallers (2015-2024)
There is something of a myth in the minds of casual race fans that hurdles races don’t produce many fallers.
It’s true that these obstacles are smaller – roughly 1ft shorter, on average, than fences – and more forgiving, with their less rigid design allowing horses to clip the top or even crash through them altogether without causing a fall or a jockey to be unseated.
But even so, that’s not to say that hurdles don’t cause falls entirely. According to research from the University of Liverpool, there’s a fall once per 254 jumps in chasing – which is reduced to one in 447 over hurdles.
Higher Hurdle Speeds an Issue
However, horses tend to travel at higher speeds in hurdles races – particularly when approaching an obstacle, with some jockeys perhaps a little too gung-ho in slowing down their ride ahead of the hurdle. The data has found that the shorter the race, the more likely a fall is (due to the speed of the action), while horses making their debut over the smaller obstacles are five times more likely to fall than more experienced racers.
Most worrying still, according to the study detailed above, a fall over fences results in the death of the horse in 3.7% of instances – that rises to 7.1% over hurdles.
When you factor in the huge numbers of people watching on from the stands at the Cheltenham Festival, and the cacophony of noise they make which, surely, unsettles some of the horses, it’s high time that officials at the course have moved to make hurdles races safer.
Only time will tell what an impact the new hurdle type will have on faller rate, but it’s interesting to note how the number of fallers has changed over the past decade in hurdles races at the Cheltenham Festival.
The line graph shows perfectly that hurdles races at the Cheltenham Festival have, if anything, been getting safer for the horses over the course of the past decade.
Going Crucial
We’re working with small numbers here, so there’s the possibility that coincidence and unconnected events have conspired to skew the data from one year to the next. But there is one logical conclusion to be sought: the going at Prestbury Park will almost certainly dictate the number of fallers.
The highest counts were recorded in years when the going was ‘extreme’ – either classed as good-to-soft or heavy for part or all of the Cheltenham Festival. That was the case in 2015, when there was little give in the surface after a dry spring, as well as in 2018 – albeit the opposite problem, with the meeting starting off on heavy ground.
The lowest numbers of fallers in hurdles races at the Cheltenham Festival came almost exclusively on soft ground: 2020, 2023 and, but for the opening day, 2024.
There’s other variables to consider. The 2021 edition saw five fallers – the median number across the decade, but the Festival was run on good-to-soft ground; therefore, we might have expected more.
However, it’s interesting to note that in 2021 no spectators were present at the meeting due to the restrictions of the health crisis. So were the horses less ‘spooked’ going into the race, given the lack of noise/people at the venue? Were the jockeys less gregarious in their jumping given the more understated atmosphere?
The 2022 edition, also ran on good-to-soft but with punters back in the stands, saw nearly double the number of fallers.
The 2023 and 2024 editions were the safest of the past decade, as far as hurdles races are concerned. Just one horse fell in 2023 – the unfortunate Moka De Vassy in the Pertemps Network Final Hurdle, with none hitting the deck in 2024. Both were, for the most part, raced on soft ground, which offers more give than good-to-soft but more support than heavy when landing.
Are Favourites Less Likely to Fall?
The fallers are, by and large, ‘lesser’ horses that weren’t fancied to win their respective races – perhaps some were operating at a grade or two too high for their natural ability.
But that’s not to say that the hurdles races at the Cheltenham Festival can’t be a source of embarrassment for the favourites either – just ask Ruby Walsh.
In 2015, he and ride Annie Power were cruising to victory in the Mares’ Hurdle – a 1/2 winner that would have hit the bookies hard to the tune of £50 million. But, inexplicably, the pair fell at the final obstacle; you could hear the cheer from the betting ring up and down the land.
If you thought that was a one-off mishap, fast forward to 2019. Walsh was again on the Mares’ Hurdle jolly – this time 10/11 favourite Benie Des Dieux – and once again the horse fell at the final hurdle when travelling better than anybody else.
Cruel luck, or over-confidence on the part of the jockey heading to the last?
#RTVMomentOfTheDay has to be this heart-stopping fall at the last from Mares’ Hurdle favourite Benie Des Dieux, a startling echo of Annie Power in 2015
Watch all the action from the #CheltenhamFestival today for free in our results and replay section
>> https://t.co/7iJOPsdIyZ pic.twitter.com/DkbMTxIrzh— Racing TV (@RacingTV) March 12, 2019
Aintree Festival: Hurdles Fallers (2015-2024)
The conclusion we can take from the Cheltenham Festival data is that hurdles races at the meeting are getting safer. Even if we think there isn’t enough information from which to make a defined statement of fact, we can at least say that hurdles renewals aren’t getting more dangerous – there’s no evidence to support that.
But what about at Aintree, who like Prestbury Park will be replacing their birch hurdles with the softer, safer padded obstacles. Were the hurdles races at the Aintree Festival dangerous and yielding a large percentage of fallers?
You don’t need to be a hardened racing fan to know that the fences at Aintree are stiff and foreboding, with the obstacles on the Grand National course famed in steeplechasing for their height and complexity.
But the hurdles at Aintree? Not so much….
There’s a general sense of consistency in the numbers of fallers in hurdles races at Aintree, which have been on a decline ever since the nadir of 2015.
That year, course officials clearly made mistakes in their preparation of the track – eight hurdles fallers in just nine races really is too high a ratio. It was another unseasonably warm spring, which resulted in good or good-to-soft ground – the number of fallers at the Cheltenham Festival was similarly high.
But had the clerk of the course gone further with their watering of the layout, the number of fallers would have likely been lower.
After 2015, the line graph takes on a pleasing downward trend. The years between 2017-2019 were the best with just two fallers apiece – in 2017 and 2018, both of those came in the conditional and amateur jockeys’ handicap hurdle, where handling errors (and perhaps a lower-grade of horse) are expected.
The 2017 edition of the meeting was something of a flagship year as far as equine welfare is concerned – every single one of the 317 horses that contested the 21 races returned to their yards injury-free, including after the Grand National.
The zero in the 2020 column is not indicative – there was no Aintree Festival due to the health crisis, although faller numbers have increased ever so slightly since then.
Aintree has followed a similar sort of pattern to Cheltenham: faller numbers have been steadily decreasing over the past decade, and so with the introduction of the new, safer hurdles, it’s not impossible that we could soon see no falls at all over the smaller obstacles at UK racing’s blue riband National Hunt meetings.
Grand National Horse Safety (2015-2023)
The Grand National is the one UK horse race that commands more interest than any other – it’s the most watched on TV, the most bet upon and the most scrutinised by animal safety groups.
It’s a steeplechase, rather than taking place over the smaller hurdles, with Aintree officials making all manner of changes to the track and its fences in a bid to make the huge race safer. The evidence suggests they’ve succeeded – for example, between 2019-2024, not a single horse fell at the previously-demanding Becher’s Brook fence, which was considered the most difficult on the circuit for many years….leading to injuries and, sadly, fatalities.
But the stats reveal that racecourse officials can make these big races safer, without diminishing the action or making them any less exciting to watch. However, it would take until 2024 for the most comprehensive set of changes to finally drive down faller numbers in the Grand National.
Looking at the image for the Grand National editions held between 2015 and 2023, a handful of conclusions can be made: the number of fallers has remained roughly the same, despite alterations to the Aintree course and pre-race checks, while the total number of horses not completing the race due to a fall, unseating their rider or being brought down actually increased to a decade-high 15 in 2023.
The 2016 edition was supposed to be a breakthrough moment for equine safety in the Grand National. The course was shortened from 4m 4f to 4m 2f, with the distance travelled to the first fence also made shorter to prevent the horses getting up too much of a head of steam.
Plastic inserts were added to the fences to make them more forgiving, while the landing sides of some of the track’s most challenging jumps – like Becher’s Brook – were levelled off to prevent falls upon landing.
Earlier Changes Haven’t Proved Effective
Did the changes work? The stats are not exactly conclusive of that.
The 2018 edition was something of a nadir, with the heavy ground playing havoc with the safety of the race. The fact that the number of non-finishing horses was so high, despite the fact they didn’t even jump Becher’s on the second circuit due to an injury suffered by jockey Charlie Deutsche, is telling.
The data in 2019 and 2021 (there was no race in 2020) was more encouraging, with the fences softened once more and the landing sides of some of the fences levelled off even more – preventing the feeling of ‘jumping off the edge of the world’ at Becher’s, as it has been described by some jockeys.
Sadly, both editions also saw horses lose their lives.
The 2022 and 2023 editions were ground zero for the Grand National – serious changes had to be made. Some 14 horses either fell, unseated their rider or were brought down in 2022; the highest figure in more than a decade.
And in 2023, that number increased to 15 – some pointing the finger of blame at protestors, who had stormed the track and delayed the start of the race by nearly quarter of an hour, leaving some observers to remark that many of the horses were too revved up by the revised start time.
Grand National 2024: The New Dawn for Equine Safety
The BHA, the Jockey Club and Aintree officials came together with one shared goal: to make the Grand National safer.
A series of ideas were floated, and ahead of the 2024 edition these were revealed:
- Reduce the field size from 40 to 34
- Move the start time forward to 16:00 from 17:15
- Reduce the distance run to the first fence by 60 yards
- Introduce a standing start
- Require more comprehensive veterinary checks on race day
- New irrigation introduced to water the course more thoroughly
- Increase the qualifying handicap rating from 125 to 130
Other alterations were made too, including reducing the height of the eleventh fence, and at last it felt like racing’s key stakeholders were taking equine safety seriously at the Grand National.
It’s true that the 2024 edition looked, to the naked eye, to be an easier and safer race, free of the chaos that informs the most dangerous Grand National renewals. Jumping appeared more straightforward, there were fewer horses to cause bottlenecks at the fences, and the pacing between obstacles seemed to be more sensible.
The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. At the 2024 Grand National, there were no fallers or horses brought down, while only four unseated their riders. The number of finishers, 21, was the highest in the race for the best part of two decades.
It just goes to show that when racing really wants to facilitate change, it can.