**** end Cheltenham sponsorship

Irish bookmakers **** are to end their sponsorship of the International meeting at Cheltenham in December after four years.

The main event of the two-day fixture is the International Hurdle, whose most recent winners were Binocular and Khyber Kim, who went on to fight out the finish of the 2010 Champion Hurdle.

**** head of marketing Mark Nunan said: "The original objective of the ****.com International Hurdle was to build brand awareness in Ireland and the UK.

"We can safely say that this objective was successfully achieved and we look forward to exploring more opportunities in racing in the coming year.

"While our sponsorship of the International Meeting comes to an end, we are in no doubt that we will be working with Cheltenham Racecourse on other opportunities in the future."

Peter McNeile, Cheltenham's director of sponsorship, added: "I would like to thank **** for their enthusiastic support of racing at Cheltenham and, in particular, for helping to develop the International Meeting in December and turning the International Hurdle into one of the most important hurdle races of the season