New race added to Cheltenham Festival Cheltenham has unveiled a new novices' hurdle for fillies and mares at the 2016 Festival. The Grade Two race, run over two miles and one furlong, will be called the Trull House Stud Mares' Novices' Hurdle, with £75,000 available in prize-money. It will be run as the sixth race on the third day of the Festival and will be sponsored by Richard and Lizzie Kelvin Hughes, who have owned classy mares such as My Petra and Chomba Womba in recent years. Both of those were trained by Nicky Henderson, who said: "I am not surprisingly delighted to hear not only that there is going to be a 28th race at the Festival, but particularly that it is going to be a mares' novices' hurdle which will be an enormous boost to the National Hunt breeding fraternity. "The introduction of a mares' novices' hurdle as the part of the expansion of black type opportunity for mares is another great incentive for National Hunt breeders and can only be of benefit to National Hunt racing as a whole."
