A BEEF farmer from North Craven is counting down the days in anticipation ahead of this year’s annual highlight in the British jumps racing calendar – the Cheltenham Festival, in March.

For Les Fell, 78, of Brigholme Farm, Giggleswick, will have a well-fancied runner in one of the Festival’s premier races, The Champion Hurdle, with his galloping grey, Silver Streak.

The eight-year-old gelding is due to run in the flagship contest, one of the British jumps calendar’s most high profile races, for the third time. He finished third in 2019, then sixth last year beaten 12 lengths by the defending champion and this year’s 9/4 ante-post favourite, the Nicky Henderson-trained Epatante.

However, things have since turned around, as Silver Streak gained due revenge in his last race when beating Epatante by a comfortable six-and-a-half lengths under regular jockey Adam Wedge in the Grade 1 Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day.

It was a well-deserved success as Silver Streak, after landing a Listed race at Kempton in October, was extremely unlucky to be carried out next time at the second fence by a loose horse in the Grade 1 Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle – Epatante won it – before finishing second beaten a nostril to Song For Someone in the Grade 2 International Hurdle at Cheltenham in December.

Then came the famous victory over Epatante, to whom Silver Streak was giving 7lbs and will do so again in this year’s Champion Hurdle, in which he is again due to be ridden by regular pilot, Adam Wedge, and for which his odds have been halved to around 10/1 third favourite. Entries for the 2021 showpiece have now closed with 27 declared at the first stage, also among them another Henderson hotpot, dual winner Buveur D’Air, plus some strong Irish challengers.

The Champion Hurdle, the highest-quality race of its type run anywhere in the world and the undoubted showpiece on the opening day of the Festival, Tuesday, March 16, is due off at 3.30pm. Carrying a total prize fund of £450,000, with a pot of over £250,000 for the winner alone, the race always attracts the crème de la crème of Europe’s speed hurdlers.

Running in it is itself a long, long shot for most racehorse owners, as too are the odds against winning or even being placed. But dreams can and do come true and Mr Fell goes into the Grade 1 Championship race with high hopes for his stable superstar, trained in Wales’s Vale of Glamorgan by Evan Williams.

Silver Streak has already amassed over £200,000 in prize money, landing some high profile races and taking some notable scalps along the way, among them, in 2018, the Swinton Hurdle, when the horse came out of the clouds to land Haydock Park’s most historic race.

It proved a major foundation stone for further glory and remains one of Mr Fell’s most cherished memories ,with his whole family present to cheer home Silver Streak. “It is a moment I will always hold dear,” he said at the time, though a new milestone moment to treasure may well be just around the corner.

“All you can do as an owner is dream about winning a prestigious race, but perhaps really not believing it is ever going to happen. Well it has – and more than once. It still feels a little bit surreal and I still have to pinch myself to realise it’s a dream come true. It’s been a fabulous journey and we are still not at the end of the road, as Cheltenham remains our Olympics!” he enthused.

So where did it all begin? With harness racing horses, in fact, and again with great success, in particular with one horse, Scoot Around, a 1999-born light bay gelding who became the first British-bred horse to break the £50,000 prize money mark and was a three times British Harness Racing Club Horse of the Year and twice Crock of Gold winner.

Retired in 2011, Scoot Around never ran a bad race and at 12 he was still one of the best horses in Britain. Bred in Wales, he was owned for most of his racing career by the Fells, trained by their daughter Rachael and driven by Alan Haythornthwaite.

Mr Fell then turned his attention to the world of thoroughbred race horses, attending Doncaster Bloodstock Sales in 2009 with good friend, Ribble Valley farmer John Townson, a past chairman of Hellifield Harness Races, of which Mr Fell is the current treasurer, so retaining links with the sport. All are hoping the annual local harness racing highlight will be given the all clear to go ahead this year on Sunday, June 20.

Mr Fell explained: “I’d picked out several as potential purchases at Doncaster, but the one I really fancied made too much money and I came away empty handed. However, I learned one of the other horses I liked, Buck Mulligan, had gone to Evan Williams. I rang him and he said he had not yet found an owner, so I agreed to buy him and that’s how our relationship began.”

Buck Mulligan won first time out at Ludlow and went on to land a half dozen races in a successful National Hunt jumping career that ended only with the horse’s retirement in 2016, when Mr Fell returned to Doncaster Bloodstock Sales with Mr Williams’ wife, Cath, and acquired Silver Streak as a three-year-old when he was put up for sale after running in flat races with well-known northern trainer Ann Duffield.

So began a long, highly successful and profitable partnership on the National Hunt circuit between owner and trainer, now great friends, with the Irish-bred Silver Steak – he is a son of Dark Angel, out of a Hamas-sired dam, Happy Talk - having to date run in 25 hurdle races, winning eight of them and being placed in most of the others.

There is little doubt that what could by far be his biggest test and potential achievement to date is fast approaching. The Champion Hurdle is usually run at a scorching pace and the trainer, a rising star who has already won this year’s Welsh Grand National at Chepstow in January with another horse, Secret Reprieve, believes that will play to Silver Streak’s strengths at Cheltenham, as he is a strong horse and needs a real good gallop.

Needless to say, Les Fell, his wife Jean and their entire family will be keeping everything crossed for a big run in the Champion Hurdle, though above all will praying that Silver Streak finishes the race safe and sound.

Could he become the first-ever horse from Craven to don the coveted Champion Hurdle crown? Only time will tell, though it’s a fair bet that the galloping grey will be carrying quite a few bets from North Craven and beyond!

Whatever happens, Silver Streak will return for his summer holidays at the farm on the banks of the River Ribble, from where his owner has been buying and selling beef cattle for the past six decades.

Mr Fell has since purchased a second racehorse, a USA-bred six-year-old bay gelding, Winds of Fire, who was originally with Godolphin as a flat horse, winning two of his six races before joining Evan Williams in 2018, again for hurdling and winning a 2m 4f handicap at Sedgefield in December, in between two runners-up slots at Hereford. They do, after all, say that success breeds success!