Has any horse ever won the Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National?
The Cheltenham Gold Cup was inaugurated, in its current guise, in 1924 and the Champion Hurdle in 1927 but, in over nine decades, just one horse has won both races at the renowned Cheltenham racecourse. That horse, or mare, was Dawn Run who, in 1984, won the Champion Hurdle – as part of a unique treble, which also included the Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown and the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteil – and, in 1986, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Dawn Run never ran in the Grand National; sadly, she suffered a broken neck during a fall in the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteil later in 1986.
However, two horses have won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand National. In fact, the first of them, Golden Miller won both races in 1934 – the year in he recorded the third of his five consecutive wins in the Cheltenham Gold Cup and broke the course record at Aintree – and remains the only horse to do so in the same season. The second, L’Escargot, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup two years running, in 1970 and 1971, before denying Red Rum his third consecutive win in the Grand National, in 1975.
No horse may have ever won the Champion Hurdle, Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National, but one man who did was the late Fred Winter; in fact, he won all three races as a jockey and as a trainer.