With Cheltenham 2025 on the horizon, PPTVs Rob Catterson sat down with Ruby to reflect on some of his Cheltenham Festival mounts and horse racing legends that helped Ruby become the best national hunt jockey ever.
From Annie Powers’ day of redemption to Kauto Stars’ crowing moment in the 2008 Gold Cup, Ruby relives some of his greatest Cheltenham Festival victories.
World Hurdle: 2014
When Annie Power first went to Cheltenham, she was 10 wins from 10 starts. She’d never run over 3m before. She didn’t go to Cheltenham as a novice. She ran in Naas before Cheltenham and won the race at Fairyhouse over 2m 4f.
She had a good season, then went to the World Hurdle.
I suppose At Fishers Cross was the big one in the race, but you had Jonjo O’Neill’s horse More Of That (eventual winner) in there too. Two good stayers; she just didn’t stay the trip. She was too keen, tanked all the way through the race, never spat it (bridle) out.
We had Quevega for the Mares Hurdle and Hurricane Fly for the Champion Hurdle, so that decided that Annie Power would run in the World Hurdle.
She pulled the arms out of me, switched out coming down the hill, and Barry Geraghty got on my tail. The opposition unfortunately was AP McCoy and Barry.
One on At Fisher Cross, (AP) and one on More Of That. Barry just got in the right place. He got behind me at the second last, so when I got up to follow AP, he was behind me, coming at me and he made me commit going to the last.
Ultimately, she didn’t stay
We just didn’t run her in the right race that day.
Mares’ Hurdle Fall: 2015
There are ‘wow’ days for people. Like, Frankie Dettor’s Magnificent 7 winners was a ‘wow’ day at Ascot.
I remember standing outside the house that morning in 2015 thinking: “I have four rides today that if you took the titles off the races and pretended it was Sandown on a Saturday, these would all be odds on.”
“Yet they were all odds against.”
I looked at each one of them individually, and I couldn’t see what was going to beat any one of them.
I was nearly right.
Douvan won, Un Des Sceaux won, Faugheen bolted up in the Champion Hurdle, and then I thought that Annie Power in the Mares’ Hurdle was the biggest certainty of them all.
She was going to win. She quickened off the bend to the last hurdle, but she just stood too far back. People say that if you did this, that, and another.
I’d say if I went out and rode her 20 more times, I’d ride her the very same way. Only it was the one in 20 times that she let fly instead of shortening.
I didn’t have time for it to bother me because I had to go to work the next day. I still had to ride at Cheltenham on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. You didn’t have time to let it bother you.
It didn’t bother me; I was disappointed. That was a day that could be remembered for all the right reasons. Unfortunately, it was gone.
Champion Hurdle: 2016
Annie Power won the Quevega Hurdle at Punchestown and Willie Mullins supplemented her for the Champion Hurdle. We knew she was in great form and we had Vroom Vroom Mag for the Mares Hurdle. We were happy with her.
We just knew that if we went hard enough on her, she could really make them go in a Champion Hurdle.
Nichols Canyon and My Tent Or Yours were in there. We bucked out and never missed a beat.
She was brave at one or two. She was actually very lucky on her next start at Aintree at the first hurdle down the back. She did the very same thing that she did at Cheltenham. This time, she got over by an inch. She had that in her.
The Champion Hurdle was great, you stick your neck out. We had Nichols Canyon but we pushed Willie Mullins to stick her in. He supplemented her.
She worked the Tuesday before Cheltenham and it was fine, I felt she needed a bit more, so we worked her again on the Friday, and she worked better. She went to Cheltenham on the Saturday morning and then hosed up in the Champion Hurdle on Tuesday.
She was a brilliant race mare who should have gotten more credit than she did.
But we had the last laugh.
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