National Hunt Season 2023/24: Kevin Blake takes you through the exciting calendar!

• Kevin Blake runs you through the 23/24 jumps season

• Early season races to keep an eye on with a view to the Cheltenham Festival

• Dublin Racing Festival and Cheltenham Festival the meetings to watch

Jumps Season 2023/2024 kick off

The days are shortening. The nights are getting colder. The ground is getting softer. All of this can only mean one thing. The National Hunt season is about to get serious!

The jumps are back

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-- Betfair Racing (@BetfairRacing) October 12, 2023

There are a few different landmarks in the calendar that are heralded as the "proper start of the jumps season."

However, there is nothing quite like the return of racing to the Mecca of National Hunt racing to hammer home that the jumps really are back.

That is what we will all witness this coming weekend as the Showcase meeting at Cheltenham rings in the return of racing to Prestbury Park.

The unmistakable sight of horses bowling around in the shadow of Cleeve Hill is sure to do wonders to warm up those that have spent a summer in racing hibernation, dreaming of hurdlers and chasers soaring over obstacles and surging through the mud.

Grade 1 contests just around the corner

If racing at Cheltenham isn't enough to restart your engine, we only have to wait a week before the first Grade 1 action of the season in the shape of the Festival of Racing at Down Royal.

This is a meeting that can always be relied on to produce an array of high-class action. Last year the featured Ladbrokes Champion Chase was won by the Gordon Elliott-trained Envoi Allen who went on to win the Ryanair Chase at the Cheltenham Festival and the card produced a host of horses that went on to be very competitive at that meeting.

Once the season is properly underway, the action comes thick and fast.

The November Meeting at Cheltenham is always a hugely popular event for racegoers. As always, the novice hurdles and novice chases will be worth keeping a particular eye on given that those contests produced the subsequent Grade 1 winners Hermes Allen, Banbridge and The Real Whacker last year.

A week later, many of the top staying chasers in training are likely to converge on Haydock for the Betfair Chase. That race often sees the first major skirmish between the top novice chasers from last season against the seasoned chasers and it rarely disappoints.

Over in Ireland, that weekend will give us our first look at the newly formed Winter Festival at Punchestown. The two-day meeting will feature an array of high-class action with the main events being the Morgiana Hurdle and the John Durkan Memorial Chase which are both likely to attract some of the very best horses in training.

The first weekend in December will see one of the first major pinch points in the Irish National Hunt calendar at the Fairyhouse Winter Festival. The Hatton's Grace Hurdle, the Royal Bond Novice Hurdle and the Drinmore Novice Chase have all produced champions over the years, and it is a meeting that always warrants the utmost attention.

Betfair-sponsored race key for Festival Clues

Top-class action sponsored by Betfair will take centre stage the following weekend as the Tingle Creek meeting features at Sandown.

The title race needs no introduction and has produced some truly epic contests over the years. Hang onto your hats, it is sure to be fast and furious from some of the best two-mile chasers in training.

At this point, we might need a couple of weeks to catch our breath before the assault on the senses that is Christmas racing arrives upon us. The array of action that we get to enjoy from St Stephen's Day/Boxing Day up to New Year's Day really is quite something.

Christmas racing offers riches in GB and Ireland

The Leopardstown Christmas Festival delivers an abundance of Grade 1 action that always has a substantial bearing on the pecking orders in the sport.

Not to be overshadowed, Kempton also plays host to a powerful card of action featuring the King George VI Chase, the Christmas Hurdle and the Feltham Novices' Chase amongst others. If that isn't enough, the Welsh Grand National at Chepstow can always be relied on to produce an enthralling and attritional spectacle and Tramore has developed a habit of pulling an ace from its sleeve for the Savills New Year's Day Chase to start the new calendar with a bang.

Once the mayhem of Christmas has subsided, pecking orders tend to have become clearer. The calendar tightens as the connections of the top horses plot their paths to the biggest focus points of the sport. There are of course some excellent contests in the UK in January and February with the Betfair Ascot Chase being a highlight, but in Ireland, there is only one show in town during this period, the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown.

Dublin Racing Festival sees class on show

The Dublin Racing Festival has quickly made up into one of the highlights of the season on either side of the Irish Sea. It boasts eight Grade 1 races over two days of high octane racing that represents the real-life retort to the common view that many of the biggest National Hunt festivals have become bloated. It attracts a swathe of passionate racegoers and always feels like a great occasion.

Though, for all the positives of the Dublin Racing Festival, it still remains the precursor to the dominant meeting in National Hunt racing, the Cheltenham Festival. Many hardcore fans crib and criticise the race programme which has been diluted over the years, but there still is nothing quite like it.

Cheltenham Festival set to be better than ever

The very best horses in the sport locking horns in front of a colossal crowd at one of the great sporting theatres in the racing world. It is a four-day feast for everyone involved in National Hunt racing and more so than any place else, it is where legends and careers are made.

There is of course so much more that comes after the Cheltenham Festival, namely the Fairyhouse Easter Festival, the Grand National meeting at Aintree and the Punchestown Festival.

Though, for many those meetings don't come into strong focus until the curtain has come down at Prestbury Park in March. Whether one likes it or not, all roads lead to the Cheltenham Festival, but by God will have some fun along the way to that destination.

Read what Daryl Carter fancies today HERE