UK Horse Racing Tips

Djakadam

After four days of pulsating equine action, it is perhaps fitting that the feature race that brings down the curtain on the Cheltenham Festival is also the most eagerly anticipated.

Run over three miles, two furlongs on Prestbury Park’s New Course, the Gold Cup has offered up some of National Hunt racing’s most iconic moments, and a reflection upon some of the former champions of this renewal – Coneygree, Bob’s Worth, Synchronised, Long Run and multiple-time winners Kauto Star and Best Mate – just offers up an appetising flavour of the quality on show.

The Grand National might see more money changing hands between punter and bookmaker (and hopefully back again), but for horse racing purists it simply does not get any better than this.

The Gold Cup always headlines the Friday of Cheltenham each year, and so on March 17 we can expect another showcase of outstanding chasing talent.

But who will win? That’s the question on everybody’s lips of course, and obviously the answer is not an open-and-shut case. Many of the planet’s finest have been pointed at the race, and this year’s renewal could be amongst the most competitive in a decade.

However, as always, history has a habit of teaching us plenty of lessons….

Wise Old Heads

Ask any experienced punter and they will all tell you the same: if you spot a betting pattern emerging, follow it in – so often we regret it when we don’t. Remarkably, the Gold Cup offers up not one but two sensible angles of attack for Cheltenham punters.

Let’s take a look at the last ten renewals of this race. Of those, five have been won by the favourite (50%) and six were priced at 7/2 or shorter (60%). Only one (Lord Windermere in 2014) took to the turf at a price of 10/1 or greater.

Typically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a race where the cream rises to the top.

Even more assertive is the trend that a certain vintage of horse prospers in this renewal. Eight of the last nine winners – that’s a whopping 89% – were aged either eight or nine at the time of their triumph. The exception to the rule was the six-year-old Long Run back in 2011.

So with that in mind, we are looking for a short priced fancy that is eight or nine years old. Refer to your favourite bookmakers’ listing and you will thus find only one standout candidate for the Gold Cup in 2017: Djakadam.

History Repeats Itself?

This French fancy is joined at the head of the market by Native River and Cue Card, but neither of these fit the age profile at seven and eleven respectively. Indeed, the ante post favourite Cue Card appears to be really up against it; only one winner of this race in more than 80 years has been aged ten or more at the time of their triumph.

Can these patterns be definitive? Not always – Cue Card is a fine horse that obviously stands a great chance of upsetting the data. But with fast conditions expected at Prestbury Park, the odds, figuratively speaking, really are stacked against him.

For the sake of a few months, we’ll add Native River to our shortlist; he turns eight in May. And what a powerhouse he is too; four of his last five outings have ended in victory, including November’s Hennessy Gold Cup Chase triumph and the ever-competitive Welsh Grand National in December. A low-key outing at the festival 12 months ago, in which he was bested by Minella Rocco in the Chase Challenge, indicated a certain fondness for this stretch.

As such, a wager on the Colin Tizzard schooled chaser is not discouraged.

But if we’re following in the numbers then Djakadam, available at prices ranging from 7/2 to 5/1, must come under serious consideration. Runner up in this very race 12 months ago, he was some four lengths back to eventual winner Don Cossack but still ten lengths ahead of the rest of the field himself. In 2015 he again finished second in the Gold Cup, this time by a length or so to Coneygree, and so arguably only a marginal gain is required to get him into the winner’s enclosure.

What may turn some punters off is a lack of recent activity – Djakadam hasn’t been seen in 2017 as yet, but clearly Willie Mullins, his trainer, is a wily old campaigner. You can expect the French horse to be fit and firing come Friday March 17; will that be enough to secure a long-awaited Gold Cup victory?

In the Sunbets.co.uk Handicap (3.30) at Southwell on Tuesday, Shearian was on a losing run of 18 and had won just three times from 52 starts prior to joining Declan Carroll in November. However, the 7-year-old has struck a rich vein of form for his new trainer, winning all three starts over course and distance and rising 25lb in the weights as a result. The Royal Applause gelding looked better than ever when readily accounting for Alpha Tauri last time and, while a 9lb rise for that performance necessitates another step up in class, he’s made a mockery of previous handicap marks and may not have finished winning just yet. Historically, the North Yorkshire trainer has done well at Southwell and Shearian can keep up the good work.

Selection: Southwell 3.30 Shearian to win (9/2 generally available)

The opening race of the Cheltenham Festival is the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and it usually pays in this 2m contest to put your faith in Irish Champion Trainer Willie Mullins who has had the winner in three of the last four years. His best chance later this month appears to be with Melon who has been subject to a huge gamble for this race ever since he scored at Leopardstown on his debut in Ireland. Mullins clearly thinks a lot of the horse, and the five-year-old must have been doing some special work at home for him to go straight to the Festival on the back of this one run. Hopefully he can make it a winning start to the week for you where he is currently available in the betting at 4/1.

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Many bookmakers disagree at this stage over who should be favourite for the Champion Hurdle this year but given what he has achieved this season, the horse they will all have to beat is Yanworth. Alan King’s horse is available at a top price of 7/2 in the horse racing betting for the premier hurdle race at the meeting. The seven-year-old has won all three of his starts in the campaign so far, including the Grade One Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day where he proved he has the speed to be successful over 2m. Given there is no Faugheen or Annie Power this year, it is the perfect opportunity for Yanworth to shine.

Thistlecrack’s defection from the Cheltenham Gold Cup field allows his stablemate Native River to have a fantastic opportunity to win the biggest race of his career at the Festival. The Colin Tizzard-trained chaser keeps on improving and after success in the Hennessy Gold Cup and Welsh Grand National this season, there can be no doubt about his stamina in this testing 3m2f contest at Prestbury Park. The seven-year-old has to be favourite over Cue Card who came down in this race 12 months ago. Although the former King George winner did look back to his best at Ascot in his most recent start, it would take a huge performance for him to prevail at the age of 11. Therefore the preference is with Native River.

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The Mares’ Hurdle is one of the newest races on the Cheltenham Festival schedule and since it inaugurated in 2008, Mullins has trained the winner in all but one of those years. His domination should continue again this year as the 2016 winner Vroum Vroum Mag will be looking to defend her crown where she will take all the beating. She is probably good enough to run against her opposite sex in the Stayers’ Hurdle, however, if successful this year she will only be the second horse to have won this contest more than once. The opposition to Vroum Vroum Mag could be decrease before the Festival if Limini runs in the Champion Hurdle which now looks a strong possibility.

Selections – Melon (Supreme Novices’ Hurdle), Yanworth (Champion Hurdle), Native River (Cheltenham Gold Cup) and Vroum Vroum Mag (Mares’ Hurdle).

If you’re like me, the prospect of a big win from a small stake is pretty much the holy grail of betting. I’ve of course had a few doubles or trebles come up in my time, or even the odd especially big priced Outsider single bet, but nothing mind boggling, no ‘lottery win’ style wins.

Of course though, some ‘have’ experienced more luck, in fact to the level that their wins even make the headlines with their unlikely windfalls. It’s hard to argue with the attention paid to these punters considering that it’s not easy at the best of time to get one over on the bookies, especially fora tiny stake and to the tune of tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds. Here are a few memorable occasions when the finger of fortune pointed straight at lucky punters:

-In May 2001 one punter struck it ‘very’ big with a 30p stake placed on a 15-event multi-sports accumulator. Most of the events in question were football bets, though two related to cricket and one a rugby game. William Hill put the odds of the bet coming up at 1,666,666 to one and the punter, who elected not to have his name released, walked away with a cool £500,000.

-In 2008 another William Hill punter bagged with even more than the individual above. The lucky unnamed punter placed just 50 pence on an eight event acca at a William Hill branch in Thirsk, North Yorkshire. The odds of this staggering win came in at 2.8 million to one, with the punter in question starting with a win on a horse called Isn’t That Lucky and ending with one called A Dream Come True. Ain’t that the truth!! The collected win was a life changing £1 million, the limit that William Hill pays out on horse racing wins.

– Pensioner Tony Savill bagged a tidy sum from a small 60 pence bet stake placed on the horses at a BetFred bookmakers in ravesend. The toteplacepot £51,326 dividend to a £1 stake meant that he won £30,000. Savill had been going to the same bookmakers for 5 years and this was his second big win, after winning £4000 on a lucky 15 bet way back in the 70s. Well done Tony!

Click here to read more about big betting wins.

It’s quite amazing to think of how much it’s possible to win with a tiny stake of under £1. What’s your biggest win?