Pertemps Final Handicap Hurdle: Past Winners, Stats & History

About the Pertemps Final Hurdle: Hugely Competitive Stayers Handicap

The organisers of the Cheltenham Festival understandably make a big deal of the fact that there are thirteen Grade 1 races taking place across the four days of action. Race goers love the chance to see the very best horses across the various divisions compete against one another but punters always enjoy getting their teeth stuck into a competitive betting heat and in that regard there is nothing quite like a handicap.

The Pertemps Final Hurdle is one such race that always provides plenty of opportunity for punters. Not only is this three mile contest a handicap but it is one that all the competitors must qualify for earlier on in the National Hunt season.

There are 19 different opportunities in Britain, Ireland and France for connections to get their horses into the Pertemps Final Hurdle and have a crack at a winner’s prize that is over £61,000 in 2026. These are held at various courses and horses must finish in the top four in at least one of them to have a chance of a place amongst the big field of the series final, with the winners of those races now guaranteed a start. Previously, horses qualified by finishing in the first six places in these races but this was changed from the 2022/23 jumps season. The top four horses from the latest qualifiers can be found here.

Never Easy To Unravel

You might think that the presence of such a structured route to the Pertemps Final Hurdle would mean that predicting the winner is relatively easy. That is not the case. Horses who go off at odds of 20/1 or longer regularly claim places whilst winners at double figures are commonplace and winning favourites rare.

When picking through the form to try and pull out a potential winner the qualifying places do seem to be the most obvious place to start. Punters will certainly get some important insights from those but it is well worth noting that only a small percentage of recent winners actually won the race that got them a place at Cheltenham.

Punters who want specific races to cast an eye over should look at October’s Cheltenham Qualifier and the Heroes Handicap run at Sandown in February even though it is not one of the qualifiers.

There are some important trends to consider for the Pertemps Final though. The race is open to horses aged five and older but Delta Work in 2018 became only the second five-year-old to win since the race was introduced to the Cheltenham Festival in 1974. The key spell in terms of age is between six and nine so punters must have very good reasons for backing any horse who falls outside of this range.

The other range to carefully consider concerns the weights. Horses with an official rating of over 150 find it very difficult to make their class show with the amount of weight that they are forced to carry. Backing a horse carrying less than 11st is ideal but the unpredictable nature of the Pertemps Final Hurdle is reflected in the fact that even the top weighted horse has won previously. The latest to do so was Sire Du Berlais who won his second successive Pertemps Final in 2020 saddling 11st 12lbs.

This weigh carried by Sire Du Berlais was in fact the joint heaviest by any winning horse in the history of the race alongside Fingal Bay in 2014, 1lb more than the next highest weighted winner, Presenting Percy, who carried a hefty 11st 11lbs to victory in 2017. The lightest runners to win the race were Rogers Princess in 1989 and Creon in 2004, both of whom were carrying 10st 0lbs.

Pertemps Final Series Qualifiers Results (2025/26)

Below we have the top four finishers in each the Pertemps Final Qualifiers during the 2025/26 season. The winners of these races are guaranteed a place in the final. Fourteen are from the UK, three are from Ireland and two are French.

Cheltenham, 14:55, Saturday 25th October 2025

Newbury, 14:50, Thursday 6th November 2025

Aintree, 12:55, Saturday 8th November 2025

Kempton, 14:30, Monday 10th November 2025

Auteuil, 14:15, Saturday 15th November 2025

Punchestown, 13:52, Sunday 23rd November 2025

Market Rasen, 13:55, Wednesday 26th November 2025

Sandown, 13:20, Saturday 6th December 2025

Carlisle, 13:40, Sunday 14th December 2025

Cagnes-sur-Mer, 12:27, Wednesday 17th December 2025

Wincanton, 15:13, Friday 26th December 2025

Leopardstown, 15:05, Sunday 28th December 2025

Warwick, 14:25, Saturday 10th January 2026

Huntingdon, 15:15, Thursday 22nd January 2026

Musselburgh, 15:40, Sunday 1st February 2026

Exeter, 15:33, Sunday 8th February 2026

Haydock, 15:50, Saturday 14th February 2026

Chepstow, 14:55, Saturday 21st February 2026

Naas, 15:30, Sunday 22nd February 2026