Catching up with Jonathan Burke ahead of the Cheltenham Festival
With the start of the 2026 Cheltenham Festival now less than a week away, we caught up with CopyBet brand ambassador Johnny Burke to see how his preparations are going and to find out what the Festival means to him.
I'm really looking forward to it, it's always a great time of the year. And to be honest, when all the horses come back in from September, every weekend you're kind of keeping an eye out for horses that could potentially end up racing at Cheltenham.
From the turn of the year, your focus really starts to shift to the spring festivals and personally for me, living close to Cheltenham, it's my local track so I always have a lot of friends over from Ireland for the festival week itself. It's always a big highlight of the year and great to be part of it.
My rides this year are still a little bit up in the air as they're mainly in handicaps and a few need a bit of luck to get in. One that looks like it might do is Ryan's Rocket. He needs 8 or 9 horses to come out at the moment so he should have a good chance of getting in and he's around a 14/1 shot.
He was travelling well the last day at Kempton before he made a bad mistake and I fell off him, but he won well before that and he should go to Cheltenham with a good chance. He's a good racing weight, should enjoy the hustle and bustle of the big field and he'd certainly be a standout ride for the week for me.
In terms of other rides still to be confirmed, Tripoli Flyer is entering a few handicaps. Then there's Chicker, a horse of Fergal's running in the Champion Bumper. He won two bumpers at the start of the summer and one at Cheltenham in October, so he has experience of the track. If the ground dries out a bit for next week then he could have a sporting each way chance.
I have a few favourite memories. An obvious one to start with would be riding my first Cheltenham Festival winner, Love Envoi, when she won the Mares Novices' Hurdle. It was a great day for the Noel Fehily syndicate and Harry Fry. You always remember your first Cheltenham Festival victory and it would be great to add to that again!
My first rides at the Festival were back when I was 18, so 11 years ago, and were in the first three races on Tuesday. Sizing John finished third in the Supreme Novices so that was a great experience.
Yeah the pressure does ramp up to do well at the Cheltenham Festival. You could be having a disappointing season in terms of number of winners in the lead up to Cheltenham week but then one success at the Festival just puts a completely different complexion on things. All of a sudden you're having a great season.
It's a week where all participants in racing, the owners, the jockeys, the horses, all capture the imagination and attention of the public, many of whom wouldn't typically watch racing from one week to the next.
One word from me to describe it would be 'special'. It's a very special place for me.
