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?

Comments are closed.