History of the SIDNEY BANKS race
First run in the mid-1970s as a tribute to the father of the late racecourse chairman Michael Banks. Sidney Banks held a permit locally to train until his death in 1973. The two-and-a-half-mile contest was famously won in 1995 by Jenny Pitman’s Nahthen Lad who went on to victory in the Cheltenham Festival race now known as the RSA Chase – the ‘Gold Cup’ for novice chasers. French Holly was another big-name winner who went on to Cheltenham glory. More recently, trainer Warren Greatrex and jockey Gavin Sheehan teamed up to triumph in the race in both 2016 and 2017.
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