Paul Townend at the Cheltenham Festival: 42 Winners, Five Gold Cups and Five Straight Titles

The record in numbers

Jockey page with current rides: /jockeys/paul-townend.

Where 42 winners sits

Festival winners by jockey, from our records after the 2026 meeting:

Rachael Blackmore, who rode the 2022 Gold Cup winner and the 2021 and 2022 Champion Hurdle winners, retired from race-riding on 12 May 2025 and is not listed as active. Our table is limited to jockeys whose totals we have verified; it is not a complete all-time list.

Five Gold Cups

The record. Every one of the five was trained by Willie Mullins.

Counted from the table: four of the five were favourites or joint-favourites; the five wins came from three horses; and the run spans eight years, 2019 to 2026, with 2021, 2022 and 2025 the years missed. Full ten-year context is in the Gold Cup guide.

Five consecutive leading-jockey titles

Townend has been leading jockey at every Festival from 2022 to 2026. We hold verified winner counts for 2026 only (four, with Harry Skelton second on two); earlier years' counts will be added as they are verified.

The 2026 Festival: four winners

All four are in our verified results and all four were for Willie Mullins.

Three of the four championship races in a single week; the fourth, the Stayers' Hurdle, went to Home By The Lee at 33/1, with Mullins' Ballyburn second.

Championship-race wins, 2017–2026

From the verified last-ten-winners tables in our race guides. Forty championship races were run in the window; Townend won eleven, all for Willie Mullins.

What the table shows: the Gold Cup accounts for nearly half of the eleven; seven of the eleven winners were favourites or joint-favourites; and the two biggest-priced wins (Al Boum Photo 2019 and Penhill 2018, both 12/1) came before the run of titles began in 2022.

What it does not show: rides and strike rates. We do not hold the number of Townend rides at each Festival and publish no percentage.

Why it matters for 2027

Townend rides for the yard with 121 Festival winners, and the two horses reported by third parties as 2027 favourites — Gaelic Warrior (Gold Cup, about 2/1, seen 21 July 2026) and Lossiemouth (Champion Hurdle, about 5/2, seen 9 June 2026) — are both Mullins horses he rode to their 2026 wins. Which horse he chooses when the yard has more than one contender in a race is one of the recurring questions of Festival week, and one we will cover in the news section as plans are confirmed. No named bookmaker price for 2027 has been verified.

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