Thyestes Chase Day at Gowran Park: The Complete Guide

The Goffs Thyestes Handicap Chase is a Grade 3 National Hunt handicap steeplechase, open to horses aged five and older. It is run over about three miles one furlong at Gowran Park, a distance that measures precisely 5,029 metres, or twenty-five furlongs, with seventeen fences to be jumped and a maximum field of eighteen runners. As a staying handicap it brings together horses at a wide range of weights, from the class horses at the top of the handicap down to the lightly weighted improvers, which is part of what makes it such a competitive contest.

The trip is a searching one. Gowran Park is an undulating, essentially galloping right-handed oval of about a mile and a half, and the Thyestes covers roughly two circuits of it. The undulations matter: a pronounced peak across the back straight tests stamina, and horses that use too much energy climbing it often fail to see the race out. Three of the fences stand in the roughly three-furlong uphill home straight, so the finish asks a stayer to jump and gallop when tired. In late January the ground is regularly soft or heavy, which sharpens the stamina test further. The 2026 running, on heavy ground, was completed in 7 minutes 10.40 seconds.

The race is worth €100,000, with €60,000 going to the winner. It is sponsored by the bloodstock house Goffs, which has backed it since 2012, and it was first run in 1954. It is traditionally the feature of a seven-race card on a Thursday in late January. In 2026 it fell on Thursday 22 January and was scheduled off at 15:30, with an actual off time of 15:34.

Detail	Goffs Thyestes Handicap Chase
Grade	Grade 3 (National Hunt handicap chase)
Distance	3m1f (5,029 m), 17 fences
Age	Five-year-olds and up
Field	Maximum 18 runners
Course	Gowran Park, Co. Kilkenny
When	Late January
Prize money (2026)	€100,000, winner €60,000
Established	1954
Sponsor	Goffs (since 2012)

The Thyestes is a handicap, so the weights are the story as much as the form. A high-class horse near the top of the handicap gives lumps of weight away over a stiff three miles, and the race's history is full of both weight-carrying performances by good horses and shocks landed by well-treated outsiders.

The Thyestes Chase was first run at Gowran Park in 1954 and celebrated its seventieth anniversary in 2024. It takes its name from a racehorse. Thyestes, a son of The Tetrarch out of Tetratema, was bred by Major Victor McCalmont of Mount Juliet and trained by Atty Persse in Wiltshire. He was rated the third-best two-year-old of 1930, winning the National Breeders Produce Stakes at Sandown and the Rous Memorial Stakes at Goodwood before injury ended his career. The horse's own name comes from Greek mythology, Thyestes being a king of Olympia. The trophy was presented to Gowran Park by the McEnery family of Rossenarra Stud for that first running in 1954.

The race made its name early. In the mid-1960s Tom Dreaper's Greenogue yard won it three years in a row, and the horses involved put the Thyestes on the map. Arkle won in 1964, in the same season as the first of his three Cheltenham Gold Cups. Fort Leney followed in 1965, later winning the 1968 Gold Cup himself. Then in 1966 came Flyingbolt, Arkle's stablemate, who carried top weight on his first try beyond two and a half miles and beat the high-class mare Height O'Fashion by a distance. Those three runnings gave the young race a lustre that few handicaps anywhere could match.

The grading has shifted over the years. Under the older Irish handicap-chase system the race appeared variously as Grade A and Grade B before settling into its current Grade 3 designation, and those older Irish grades do not map neatly onto the British Grade 1 to Grade 3 scale. The sponsorship has moved around too. The race ran as the Goulding Thyestes Handicap Chase in 2004 and 2005, and Cuisine de France and Duggan Steel have also lent their names to it over time.

The current era belongs to Goffs, the bloodstock house that has sponsored the race since 2012. The tie makes sense for both sides: the Thyestes falls at the start of the inspection period for the Goffs Arkle Sale, Ireland's leading store sale, so the winter's most historic staying handicap and the store-horse trade sit side by side on the calendar. Through it all the race has kept the identity it earned in the Dreaper years, a proper old-fashioned staying handicap that the best Irish jumps yards want to win.

The Thyestes roll of honour is what gives the race its standing, and it starts at the very top. Arkle, the highest Timeform-rated chaser in history at 212, won the 1954-founded handicap in 1964 under Pat Taaffe, conceding 35 lb to the runner-up Loving Record. Gowran Park's own history records that he was led into the winner's enclosure by his owner Anne, Duchess of Westminster. It was the middle leg of three Irish handicap wins that winter that set him up for the first of his three Cheltenham Gold Cups. Two years later his stablemate Flyingbolt produced one of the great weight-carrying displays to win the 1966 running, beating Height O'Fashion by a distance.

The modern era is dominated by one man. Willie Mullins is the record-holding trainer, with as many as ten named winners, though the course's own site has at times cited a lower tally of seven: Micko's Dream (2000), Hedgehunter (2004), Homer Wells (2007), On His Own (2012 and 2014), Djakadam (2015), Invitation Only (2019), Total Recall (2020), Carefully Selected (2023) and Nick Rockett (2025). In the saddle, David Casey and Paul Townend have each won it three times in the modern era, Townend aboard On His Own (2014), Carefully Selected (2023) and Nick Rockett (2025). Four horses have won it twice: Wylde Hide (1995 and 1996), Bob Treacy (1999 and 2001), Priests Leap (2008 and 2009) and On His Own.

Two of Mullins's winners belong to the race's proudest tradition, its Aintree Grand National graduates. Hedgehunter won the 2004 Thyestes under David Casey and then landed the 2005 Grand National by fourteen lengths. Numbersixvalverde, trained by Martin Brassil, won the 2005 Thyestes and went on to take the 2006 Grand National. Nick Rockett completed the sequence most recently, winning the 2025 Thyestes for Mullins and Townend before landing the 2025 Grand National under Patrick Mullins. Djakadam and On His Own, meanwhile, both went on to finish placed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, another mark of the race's quality.

The table below sets out the winners of the last dozen runnings.

Year	Winner	Trainer	Jockey	SP
2015	Djakadam	Willie Mullins	Ruby Walsh	9/2
2016	My Murphy	n/a	n/a	16/1
2017	Champagne West	Henry de Bromhead	David Mullins	7/1
2018	Monbeg Notorious	Gordon Elliott	n/a	7/2
2019	Invitation Only	Willie Mullins	Ruby Walsh	4/1
2020	Total Recall	Willie Mullins	Danny Mullins	16/1
2021	Coko Beach	Gordon Elliott	n/a	9/1
2022	Longhouse Poet	Martin Brassil	Darragh O'Keeffe	9/1
2023	Carefully Selected	Willie Mullins	Paul Townend	9/2
2024	Ain't That A Shame	Henry de Bromhead	Rachael Blackmore	14/1
2025	Nick Rockett	Willie Mullins	Paul Townend	9/2
2026	Now Is The Hour	Gavin Cromwell	Eoin Staples	8/1

A few of those runnings stand out. Djakadam defied top weight of 11-10 in thick fog on heavy ground in 2015. Coko Beach won the 2021 renewal behind closed doors under Covid restrictions. The 2025 win by Nick Rockett was an emotional one for owner Stewart Andrew, whose late wife Sadie had wished to see the horse win the race. In 2026 Now Is The Hour, trained by Gavin Cromwell and ridden by Eoin Staples claiming 5 lb, got up by a head on the line from Better Times Ahead, after the 7/2 favourite Captain Cody had been an early casualty.

The full pre-1988 roll is not reproduced here, because complete year-by-year records for the earliest runnings could not be verified from a single credible archive. What is beyond doubt is the calibre of the names attached to the race, from Arkle and Flyingbolt in the 1960s to the Grand National winners of the modern era.

The Thyestes is a full-field staying handicap, and that shapes the way it bets. Up to eighteen runners go to post over three miles one furlong and seventeen fences, carrying weights that stretch from the top of the handicap down to the well-treated improvers. Handicaps of this kind are competitive by design, and the market reflects it: the race has been won by short-priced favourites and by outsiders alike.

The trip and the ground are the first things to weigh. The stiff, undulating Gowran Park circuit, with its stamina-sapping peak on the back straight and three fences in the uphill home straight, rewards genuine stayers, and the late-January going is regularly soft or heavy. A horse that is proven at three miles or more on testing ground, and that jumps economically, has the profile the race asks for. Weight matters too: giving away lumps over this trip is hard, and the winner is often a horse well handicapped rather than the highest-rated runner on paper.

The snapshot below sets out what the record shows, as context rather than as a system to follow.

Angle	What the record shows
Field size	Up to 18 runners, a full-field handicap
Trip and obstacles	3m1f, 17 fences, a searching stamina test
Going	Regularly soft or heavy in late January
Leading yard	Willie Mullins, as many as ten wins (seven by the course's own count)
Favourites	Have won some runnings (Hedgehunter 100/30 in 2004, Invitation Only 4/1 in 2019, Carefully Selected 9/2 in 2023)
Bigger prices	Common: Jadanli won at 25/1 in 2013, Priests Leap at 20/1 in both 2008 and 2009

The honest point to take from that is the one every handicap teaches. The favourite wins here often enough to respect but nowhere near often enough to follow blindly, and backing the head of the market over time loses money to the starting price. There is no trend, no draw angle and no staking plan that turns a competitive eighteen-runner handicap into a profit. The trends above are context for reading the race, nothing more.

Set a budget before the day and treat it as your entertainment allowance. A good day at Gowran is a good day whether or not your selection obliges, and it is a much worse one if you have lost more than you meant to. You must be 18 or over to bet. For support with gambling, visit BeGambleAware.org.

For the wider picture of form and going at the course across the season, see the Gowran Park Racecourse Complete Guide.

The Thyestes falls in late January, a busy point in the National Hunt season, after the Christmas festivals and with the spring targets of Cheltenham and Aintree starting to come into view. That timing is why the race matters beyond Gowran Park: it is one of the winter's most important staying handicap chases, and it doubles as a trial for the biggest staying prizes of the spring.

The clearest trial line runs to Aintree. Three Thyestes winners have gone on to win the Grand National. Hedgehunter won the 2004 Thyestes and the 2005 Grand National; Numbersixvalverde won the 2005 Thyestes and the 2006 Grand National; and Nick Rockett completed the pattern in the most emphatic way, winning the 2025 Thyestes and then the 2025 Grand National in the same season. Longhouse Poet, the 2022 winner, was campaigned towards Aintree by Numbersixvalverde's trainer Martin Brassil. Of the last twenty-three runnings, eight winners went on to run in that season's Grand National, with Nick Rockett the only one to win it in the same year.

The race points towards Cheltenham as well. On His Own and Djakadam both went on to finish placed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and the history books stretch the link back much further. Arkle won the 1964 Thyestes on his way to the first of three Gold Cups, Fort Leney followed his 1965 win here by taking the 1968 Gold Cup, and Flyingbolt (1966) and Arkle both won the Irish Grand National too. Few handicaps anywhere can claim a graduate list of that quality.

There is a bloodstock strand to the day as well. The Thyestes falls at the start of the inspection period for the Goffs Arkle Sale, Ireland's leading store sale, which is part of why the bloodstock house has sponsored the race since 2012.

Thyestes day is not a one-race card. The feature is supported by the Grade 2 John Mulhern Galmoy Hurdle, a staying hurdle whose roll of honour includes War of Attrition, Presenting Percy, Benie Des Dieux and Teahupoo; the 2026 running went to Home By The Lee for Joseph O'Brien. Gowran Park's other big winter date comes a few weeks later in February, when Red Mills Day is headed by the Grade 2 Red Mills Chase and the Grade 3 Red Mills Trial Hurdle, long regarded as Cheltenham Festival preps. Together the two fixtures make Gowran a key stop on the road through the Irish jumps season.

For the course's full fixture list, its facilities and its other graded races, see the Gowran Park Racecourse Complete Guide.

Thyestes day is the biggest one-day National Hunt meeting in the Irish south-east, and it feels like it. Described as "the race that stops a county", it draws a crowd in the region of nine thousand, up towards a capacity of around ten thousand on the busiest years, with local schools and businesses effectively closing for the afternoon. Corporate hospitality routinely sells out well in advance for the first-quarter fixtures, and the ground-floor Thyestes Bar and the first-floor Blinkers Bar are the busy hubs on the day, with live music in the bars and a party marquee adding to the occasion.

If you are watching from home, the race is covered by Racing TV, which broadcasts Irish racing across all the country's courses. On Thyestes day there is additional free-to-air coverage in the Republic of Ireland from RTE, which typically shows around four live races from the card. UK viewers will find it on Racing TV rather than terrestrial television.

Getting there is straightforward. Gowran sits about thirteen kilometres east of Kilkenny city on the old Dublin to Waterford road. By road, take the M9 to Junction 7, signposted Paulstown, and follow the signs to Gowran; the course is a short way beyond the village. There are hundreds of free car-parking spaces on site. A complimentary shuttle bus runs from Kilkenny city on race days, and mainline trains reach Kilkenny and Thomastown stations from Dublin and Waterford, with taxis available from there.

Admission is bought in advance. In 2026 general admission was €15 online or €20 on the gate. Reserved Silver packages, offered on some other fixtures, are not sold for Thyestes day, so the day is built around general admission and hospitality. The card in 2026 ran to seven races on Thursday 22 January, with the Thyestes itself scheduled off at 15:30 and actually going off at 15:34.

A word on the betting, because plenty of it goes on. Favourites are respected and win their share, but this is a competitive eighteen-runner handicap that regularly rewards a well-treated outsider, and following the market blindly is no path to profit. Read the trip, the ground and the weights, treat any system or model as fallible, and enjoy the day for what it is: one of the great occasions of the Irish jumps winter.

For the full detail on tickets, enclosures, food and where to stay, see the Gowran Park Racecourse Complete Guide.