According to the publicists at Chepstow Racecourse, this weekend’s Welsh Racing Festival marks the start of the jump racing season “proper”. Which of course is a matter for debate…

Readers of this blog will be aware that Kelso’s season launched last month, on Wednesday 17th September, and we only stage jump racing – so how does that work? Last week we welcomed hundreds of children to the annual Family Fun Day for our second fixture and in five-and-a-half weeks’ time, we’ll have staged three more racedays – meaning that we’ll be one third of the way though the fifteen-fixture programme that constitutes Kelso’s full fixture list.

So, you might ask, when is the official start of the jump season?

The final day of the 2024/25 jump racing season was Saturday 26th April at Sandown Park, when Willie Mullins clinched the trainers’ title in a tight battle with Dan Skelton. The next jump fixture to take place was at Cheltenham on Friday 2nd May, when the programme was devoted entirely to Hunter Chases ridden by amateur jockeys. For a brief period, following Barton Snow’s victory in the Bottle Green Open Hunters Chase (prize fund £5,500), the season’s leading jockey was Mr James King and the top trainer J.J. O’Shea.

Despite an enviable strike rate of 17%, Mr King has slipped slightly in the season’s rankings with four wins from 24 rides. In the meantime, Sean Bowen has stolen a healthy lead over his rivals in the jockeys’ championship – amassing a total of 101 wins from 358 rides, which surely gives the lie to Chepstow’s claim that this weekend’s fixture represents the start of the jump season… except they added the word “proper”.

And the word “proper” is important because it suggests that this weekend is an inflection point when the best horses start to appear and the quality of the racing transitions from being entertaining to unmissable.

I have some sympathy with this view having fallen in love with the meeting’s feature race, the Silver Trophy Handicap Hurdle, after it was won by Bradbury Star in 1990. Unfortunately the last time I backed the winner of the race was in 1997, when Marello took the pot for trainer Mary Reveley and jockey Peter Niven. But all that changes tomorrow when Harry Skelton (currently 30 winners from 121 rides this season) takes the ride aboard this weekend’s selection: Royal Infantry.

For those of us that got a bit bored of flat racing immediately after the Epsom Derby in June, the jump season started some time ago. I’d argue that we’ve already seen some “proper” horses at Kelso: horses like Malystic (trained by the very same Peter Niven who rode Marello 28 years ago), Tommy’s Oscar (previously rated as high as any horse running at Chepstow) and Shakeyatailfeather (trained by Dan Skelton to beat both the aforementioned runners in last weekend’s NSPCC School Service Chase). Look out for all of them as the season progresses.

But the truth is that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The story of the 2025/26 jump season is gaining rapid momentum – if you’ve not taken it in yet, now is the time to start.