UK Horse Racing Tips

The Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle is a Grade 2 novices’ hurdle run over 2 miles at Kempton Park in late February. Open to horses aged four years and upwards who, at the start of the current season, have yet to win a race over hurdles, the race was inaugurated, as a Listed event, in 1988 before being promoted to Grade 2 status three years later.

Nicky Henderson, who saddled the inaugural winner, Over The Counter (1988), was also responsible for Flown (1992), Kimanicky (1996), Premier Generation (1999), Shatabdi (2007), Forgotten Voice (2013), Days of Heaven (2015) and River Wylde (2017) and is the leading trainer in the history of the race. Interestingly, Hampshire trainer Chris Gordon has won two of the last three renewals, courtesy of Highway One O Two (2020) and Aucunrisque (2022).

Aside from Flown, who won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival on his next start, notable winners of the Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle include Granville Again (1991), who won the Champion Hurdle two years later, having fallen at the second-last flight when holding every chance in 1992, and Sire De Grugy (2011), who won the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2014.

Just one of the last ten renewals of the Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle has attracted more than nine runners but, despite mainly single-figure fields, just three favourites, two of which were odds-on, have won in that period. That said, all ten winners featured in the first three in the betting, so the Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle is clearly not a race for rank outsiders either. Recent trends suggest that likely winners are five or six years old, are officially rated at least 130 and have winning form within the last six weeks or so. Previous experience of Kempton and winning form in Graded races, of any description, are less important.

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