Teahupoo

The headline on his CV is seven Grade 1 wins, the top tier of jump racing, including a famous victory at Cheltenham in March 2024. He tends to do something that unnerves even his own trainer mid-race: he looks like he is already going flat out, straining and toiling, while horses around him are cruising. Elliott has compared him to Big Buck's and Inglis Drever, two of the great staying hurdlers of a previous era, who shared the same honest, effort-on-show style. The difference is, Teahupoo is doing exactly what they did — he just makes it look harder than it is.

His partnership with jockey Jack Kennedy is one of the defining combinations in jump racing right now. Together they have won 7 of their 9 races — that is 78% of the time — a connection that borders on telepathic. Kennedy clearly understands that this horse needs pace, needs to be stretched, and when the race gets genuinely fast and tough, Teahupoo comes alive. His last win at Leopardstown on 28 December 2025 proved exactly that: Elliott noted afterwards that the faster they went, the better he was.

He is also a course specialist at Fairyhouse, winning 3 of his 4 races there, and Elliott is candid about what he is: a genuine three-mile horse who is slow by modern standards but has, in his trainer's words, "a heart like a lion." He is not flashy. He does not travel smoothly through his races. But he keeps finding more when it matters, which is ultimately the only thing that counts.

With Cheltenham on the horizon and Elliott confident that a recent prep run will have him spot on, Teahupoo heads into the biggest week of the jumping year in form, in good hands, and with unfinished business on the greatest stage in the sport.