There are plenty of ways a horse can catch the eye at Cheltenham, but having the same name as one of cycling’s biggest stars is a very good start.
At 4:40 today in the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase, there is a runner called Vanderpoel. Not van der Poel, of course, and no, Mathieu is not trading the cobbles for the fences. But the resemblance is close enough to raise a smile, especially for anyone whose spring is normally split between the Cheltenham Festival and the business end of the Classics season.
It is also a fitting name for a horse in this sort of race. The Grand Annual is a furious two-mile handicap chase, usually run at a proper clip, full of pressure, momentum and very little margin for hesitation. That is not entirely unlike watching Mathieu van der Poel hit a key sector in a Monument and decide that everyone else has had enough comfort for one day.
The horse Vanderpoel comes into the race with a profile that makes him easy to like. Still relatively lightly raced over fences, he has won his last two starts and looks the sort who is still improving rather than simply holding his level. In a race like the Grand Annual, that matters. These handicaps are rarely kind to horses who have already shown the assessor everything.
Photo Credit: GettyThere is something quite amusing about that too. The cyclist van der Poel has built his reputation on making the hardest races look instinctive. The horse Vanderpoel, at least on recent evidence, seems to be doing something similar in his own discipline, travelling well, jumping soundly enough and keeping enough in reserve to finish his races strongly.
That does not mean the comparison needs stretching too far. One is a generational bike rider with world titles and Monuments. The other is a seven-year-old chaser trained by Ben Pauling lining up in one of Cheltenham’s great Festival scrambles. But sport is built on these little moments of crossover, and it would be hard not to enjoy this one.
The Grand Annual is also the perfect setting for a name like this to gather attention. It is not a race for the faint-hearted. It tends to be fast, messy and unforgiving, the sort of contest where rhythm matters and a single mistake can leave a horse with far too much ground to make up. If Vanderpoel is still travelling smoothly when others are beginning to paddle, the name will only become more enjoyable.
There is a wider point here as well. Cycling and jump racing do share a certain spring energy. Both are sports of attrition, timing and nerve. Both reward athletes, equine or human, who can stay balanced when the tempo rises and the pressure begins to bite. So perhaps it is not such a strange crossover after all. Perhaps a horse called Vanderpoel turning up in March is exactly the sort of sporting coincidence the season deserves.
It also lands rather neatly in a week when cycling fans are already beginning to look ahead to the first major spring targets. ProCyclingUK’s Milan-Sanremo Women 2026 route guide captures that shift in mood well, the point where winter starts to give way to the races that define the season. A horse called Vanderpoel at Cheltenham feels very much in the same spirit.
Whether he wins or not, he has already achieved something useful: he has given cycling fans a horse to keep an eye on at Cheltenham and given everyone else a reminder that sport is often at its most fun when the worlds briefly overlap.
Mathieu van der Poel might still have Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix on his mind. But for one afternoon at least, Cheltenham has a Vanderpoel of its own.
Main photo credit: Edward Whittaker
