Betfair Imperial Cup Day

The £100,000 Betfair Imperial Cup Bonus

This season Sandown Park are delighted to reintroduce a hugely valuable bonus to any horse which wins the Betfair Imperial Cup Handicap Hurdle on Saturday 8th March and then goes on to land any of the 28 races at The Cheltenham Festival the following week (March 11th-14th inclusive). 

The Betfair Imperial Cup bonus is worth £100,000 to connections of the winning horse and would see £60,000 awarded to the winning owner, £20,000 to the winning trainer, £10,000 to the winning yard and £10,000 to the winning jockey - split in half if different jockeys ride at Sandown Park and Cheltenham.

Only three horses have won the bonus when it was offered by previous race sponsors - Olympian (1993 Coral Cup), Blowing Wind (1998 County Handicap Hurdle) and Gaspara (2007 Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle). All three horses hailed from the famous Nicholashayne yard in Somerset belonging to the Pipe family, with Martin Pipe saddling Olympian and Blowing Wind, while Gaspara was trained by his son and successor David. More recently, the Dan Skelton-trained Langer Dan went close in 2021, following up his Sandown Park success with a second-place finish at Cheltenham six days later.