The Cheltenham Festival is the world's most prestigious jump horse racing meeting, easily bettering the Grand National meeting in terms of attracting top-tier horses. Held at Cheltenham Racecourse in Gloucestershire, the Festival is the season's pinnacle. It is eagerly awaited by fans who travel long distances to witness the beloved event. Lasting for four days, it offers numerous betting opportunities that could be based on past statistics – the main topic of this article that is looking at various trends to understand how to bet during the Cheltenham Festival.
A Brief Overview
To follow key trends, we need to know what races are run over the four days. The Festival currently features 28 races, including Group 1 (the highest class), Group 2, Group 3, several Handicaps where horses carry different weights depending on their previous performances, and Novices' Races for less experienced jumpers.
As the Festival has grown significantly, it has been attracting not only the best horses, jockeys, and trainers but also many visitors from various countries. Still, the main competition unfolds between the British and the Irish, who strive to win the Prestbury Cup alongside the races themselves. The Prestbury Cup is awarded to a country achieving the most wins during the Festival, with the Irish dominating the duel with flying colours.
Top Jockeys and Trainers
As we focus here on trends to help us decide our bets, discussing the best jockeys and trainers of history isn't that important. Ruby Walsh holds the record for the most Cheltenham Festival wins with 59; however, Paul Townend is the only jockey of the current Top five who is still active. His number of victories stands at 28, but it is expected to increase each year thanks to his position at Willie Mullins’ stable – the most successful trainer in Cheltenham history.
Whenever a horse is ridden by Paul Townend and trained by Willie Mullins, who currently has 94 wins at the Cheltenham Festival, it deserves our attention even when it's not favoured. The second most successful trainer is Nicky Henderson, who resided in the UK, unlike Irish Willie Mullins, so his horses shouldn't be overlooked, too.
However, the Prestbury Cup statistics are crystal clear – the Irish have been much stronger in the past ten years of the Cheltenham Festival, thanks to Mullins' exploits and another brilliant Irish trainer, Gordon Elliott.
Betting Odds and Trends
The Cheltenham Festival is a massive event for bookmakers; therefore, they offer various betting opportunities, and Cheltenham free bets are hugely popular. However, what are the trends? Betting on favourites is viable at Cheltenham Festival, where the favourites fare relatively well, especially in the Group 1 races like the Champion Hurdle and Queen Mother Champion Chase. The Handicaps are way trickier to employ this strategy, but the percentage of about 20 % winning favourites isn't terrible, too.
Still, we shouldn't ignore outsiders because some races favour them. It is a task for dedicated bettors to go through the forms and pick themselves the right race and the right outsider, yet the payout is dreamlike. For example, the Coral Cup's winners usually boast odds from 16/1 to 33/1, and the County Hurdle winners are often offered at 16/1 to 50/1.
Age also matters at Cheltenham Festival as horses between 7-10 tend to score the Group 1 races, while the Novices’ races are, of course, meant for younger horses. In terms of Handicaps, they could see even older participants succeeding as they might carry lesser weight due to their previous results. In Handicaps, aiming at horses with lower weight could be a profitable strategy, especially when the ground is heavy.
The last leading trend to take into account deals with certain horses who just love Cheltenham. The racecourse is undulating, which doesn't suit all the participants, so we should consider horses who have already run well there.
The Most Popular Bets
As the Cheltenham Festival is four days long, people like special bets, such as betting on the Top Jockey of the whole event or the Prestbury Cup. Also, linking multiple festival race winners into a single bet – the Accumulator Bet – is very popular, keeping us on the edge from the beginning to the end. For more conservative bettors, there is betting on the favourites or Place Betting for the horse to finish in the Top 3, while some big odds tempt us to place an Each-Way Bett as we can see an outsider running remarkably well.
