Victor Ludorum is Latin for “winner of the games”. The phrase can and has been used for all manor of competitions, equine and otherwise, around the world.
The Victor Ludorum Hurdle for four-year-olds at Haydock dates back to 1962. It was then a £1,000 race run in March, four days before the Cheltenham Festival. Haydock was hoping to exploit an imminent gap in the market, for the Triumph Hurdle – the four-year-olds’ championship – used to take place at Hurst Park immediately after Cheltenham. Hurst Park closed at the end of 1962.
In 1963 Kempton arranged an equivalent race for February, the Friary Meux Hurdle, but it and Haydock’s Victor Ludorum were frozen off; it was a record-breaking long harsh winter.
In 1964 Cheltenham moved to the first week of March, with the Gold Cup run on Saturday. Annoyingly for Haydock, that clashed with their meeting. In 1965 the Triumph Hurdle was revived, at Cheltenham. The valuable Friary Meux Hurdle was still getting in the way too. Though the triple Champion Hurdler Persian War won the Victor Ludorum in 1967, it fell back into being an eleventh-hour Triumph trial in early March, or a second division championship. Not until 1994 did it deliberately step back into February, and now it is run about three weeks before Cheltenham.
In more recent times Frodon’s success in 2016 was one of his two victories over the sticks before going on to win 17 steeplechases and compete at the highest level.