Cheltenham do’s and don’t’s? Don’t park in the first car park you see and do check out the tented village and buy your wife a pair of pink Wellington boots so that she is less likely to remember the fact that you were gone for a week than she is to remember the fact that you came home with a cool present when it comes to next year’s negotiations, for sure. But from a betting point of view?
Do take the time to study every race closely before you have a bet. Every horse in every race. Do pace yourself. Don’t bet unless you think that you are betting at a value price, a price that is greater than (if you are backing) or less than (if you are laying) its true price. Same as every other day then?
In one sense, yes, exactly the same. In another though, no. Chalk and cheese. The thing about Cheltenham is that every race looks like an opportunity. Take any one of the 27 races – with the possible exception of the conditional jockeys’ hurdle and the 0-140 novices’ handicap chase – and stick it into a normal Saturday afternoon, organise a couple of Channel 4 cameras for yourself and get the bookmakers to price it up the night before, and hey presto, you have a Saturday feature race. Imagine you had 27 Saturday feature races in four days, how would you organise your betting?
The trick is to almost look for reasons to not have a bet as opposed to reasons to have a bet. There are so many opportunities, you need an awful lot of time to study each race to the degree to which you should. Concentrate on the races in which you think you may have an edge before you start your assessment. If you conclude that the edge you thought you had does not exist in reality, no harm done, forget about it and move on to the next race. There are plenty of them.
Here are four of my conclusions thus far. Firstly, Hurricane Fly is probably value at 10/11, if you are into betting the short ones. He probably should be a fair bit shorter than that. He is fairly bomb-proof. He is all class, he is proven at the track, he goes on fast and soft ground, he can quicken off a fast pace, he can settle off a slow pace, he is the reigning champion, he is proven over the course and distance, he out-battled the battler Peddlers Cross up the hill in the race last year, he is trained by one of the best trainers and he will be ridden by one of the best riders. It is difficult to find a chink.
I backed Zarkandar and Oscars Well a while ago and, while I think that both of them will run well, probably better than their respective odds suggest they will, in reality I don’t think that either will win unless Hurricane Fly under-performs inexplicably.
Secondly, Sizing Europe is value at even money. He is similar to Hurricane Fly in that he is bomb proof, he loves the track, he loves fast ground, he is the reigning champion returning, he beat his main rival Big Zeb pointless in the Tied Cottage Chase last time on ground that was far softer than ideal for him, and he should improve for that run.
None of the pretenders has really progressed to challenge the domination of Sizing Europe and Big Zeb in the two-mile chasing division. It was disappointing that Finian’s Rainbow couldn’t beat Somersby in the Victor Chandler Chase last time, and the fact that his odds for the Champion Chase were hardly extended a jot on the back of that defeat tells you how weak this race is in terms of depth.
I was trying to argue the case for Wishfull Thinking, I was trying to convince myself that he could leave this year’s form behind on Wednesday, he hailing from the Philip Hobbs yard and all, a yard that majors (relatively) on Cheltenham as much as the Big Three (Nicholls, Henderson and Mullins), but doesn’t really get the press to reflect that fact. He may well do that, but he would want to leave it a long way behind to be a player, and 14/1 is no better than fair.
Thirdly, Big Buck’s is no value at 4/7 for the World Hurdle. He is a phenomenon, in the sense that he is unbeaten in 15 runs over hurdles since he was re-routed over the smaller obstacles after unseating his rider at the final fence in the 2008 Hennessy Gold Cup. He has also won the last three renewals of Thursday’s race.
However, while he beat Grands Crus last year, he has never encountered a World Hurdle field that has the strength in-depth that this year’s challengers have. In particular, Thousand Stars, Oscar Whisky, So Young and Voler La Vedette have the potential to get close to Big Buck’s. Paul Nicholls’s stalwart was a 10/11 shot to win the race last year as an eight-year-old, he shouldn’t be a shorter price to win a better race this year as a nine-year-old.
Fourthly and finally, Weird Al is over-priced at 12/1 for the Gold Cup. Long Run and Kauto Star look under-priced on the face of it but, on closer examination, although it looks like a big field is going to line up, the race is seriously lacking strength in-depth. Of the top six in the betting, Synchronised surely needs softer ground than he is likely to get if he is to win a Gold Cup, Midnight Chase is a decent stick, he loves the course and he will love the ground, but we know exactly how good he is, he has no secrets, no scope for progression, and we know that it would be a mediocre Gold Cup that he would win.
Burton Port is interesting, but the ‘bounce’ factor is a factor, and he is priced up as if it isn’t. He should be at least three or four points bigger to allow for the possibility that he will bounce.
That leaves Long Run, Kauto Star and Weird Al. Donald McCain’s horse has just two lengths to find with Long Run on their running at Haydock in November, he hasn’t run since then, he is at his best when he is fresh, he has won twice at the track and he is six times Long Run’s odds. If it’s value you are after – and you should be – then do keep Weird Al on side.
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