Cheltenham Festival bets at juicy prices

This article titled “Claims Five: Cheltenham Festival bets at juicy prices” was written by Chris Cook, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 11th March 2011 12.13 UTC

I hope there’s nothing going on in your life. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s the Cheltenham Festival next week and, if you’re the least bit interested in horse racing, this is an event that demands all of your concentration.

We have spent months in the build-up but it will be over before you know it. Do you want to be like Diamond Harry or Riverside Theatre, going through an age of preparation only to miss out on the whole point?

Clearly not. So make sure you have some time to yourself next week when you can watch one race and have a think about what might win the next. Time to ruminate is very important. There will be more than 400 horses over the four days at Cheltenham and few things are worse than seeing one of your favourites pulling clear up the famous hill and thinking: “I didn’t even know that was running.”

If your preference is for outsiders over favourites, the Festival should be the high spot of your betting year. It is possible to back winners at 25-1 on any given day but there is no other time when so many talented horses are sent out to try for their lives at double-figure odds.

The competition is intense and it is still possible for diligent punters to gain an edge at this meeting by studying all the runners. The fields are big and the market tends to fixate on those at the top of the betting, horses that have been discussed as Festival contenders since the turn of the year. The claims of others may be less obvious but we know from experience that they are still perfectly able to win.

Sixteen of the 26 races at the last Festival were won by horses returned at double-figure starting prices. Those included Cue Card (40-1), Chief Dan George (33-1), Berties Dream (33-1), A New Story (25-1) and Thousand Stars (20-1). There have been 10 winners at 40-1 or bigger since the 2004 Festival, with 2009 the only year in which no such outsiders came home in front.

Those are the winners I want to back. I understand why people lump on Cue Card because, even at 9-4, it’s a thrill and a source of lasting pleasure to back a Festival winner. Whenever you see the replay on TV, you can think to yourself, I backed that. Then again, nothing makes you feel more like a mug than a big bet on a beaten favourite at the most competitive meeting of the year. Rather than risk ending up under that particular bus, I shall once more be confining most of my bets to horses at 14-1 and up.

This doesn’t mean sticking a few quid on every outsider in the hope of a turn-up, which would be a very expensive strategy in the long run. Some of these big-priced winners had an evident chance for those prepared to see it and, since we know that there are going to be winners at fancy prices, why wouldn’t you go looking for them?

Largely, this is a day-of-race job, since quite a few horses will start at bigger odds than are available now, an effect of the bookies competing for your custom. Also, many horses are still entered in more than one race and, if a final decision has been made, their trainers/owners just ain’t saying.

But here is my first stab at identifying some ridiculous outsiders for next week. The ridiculous aspect is guaranteed: either they are available at ridiculous prices, or it is ridiculous of me to imagine they could possibly win.

Remember that many firms are now into the ‘non-runner, no-bet’ stage and will refund your stake if your horse doesn’t start in the race for which you backed him. Check before you bet.

1) Mille Chief

I was deeply impressed with the way Mille Chief travelled through Wincanton’s Kingwell Hurdle. In the end, his performance did not impress most observers, as he beat Celestial Halo by a nose in receipt of 4lb and would have been beaten if his rival had jumped the last cleanly, but Celestial Halo is top-class at his best and was beaten by only a neck in the 2009 Champion. He was an easy winner of the National Spirit the weekend after the Kingwell.

Mille Chief needs to do better but, being a five-year-old, he is probably capable of it. He has taken time to come to himself this season, after suffering a minor leg fracture a year ago, but has made significant improvement with each run and seems likely to do better still on a better surface, such as the one he may very well encounter in Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle.

He’s younger than most winners of this race, and Alan King’s horses are not faring significantly better than last season, even though the general view is that the stable has recovered from whatever bug made life difficult then. But Mille Chief is a classy animal who should not be as big as 16-1.

2) Kayef

This is more like it. Kayef is a 33-1 shot for the Fred Winter but he doesn’t seem like a no-hoper to me. Well beaten on his first two starts in Britain, he was backed on his third outing, at Sandown last month, and stayed on well to draw 12 lengths clear of the runner-up. His trainer, Michael Scudamore, reports that he has stepped up again in his work since that race.

Scudamore’s plan is to fit the horse with cheekpieces, which he wore on the Flat in France but has not had so far over hurdles. “We left them off in the hope that we would get into the Fred Winter and they would help him find a length or two,” the trainer says.

There have been six runnings of the Fred Winter and last-time-out winners have won the past five, so Kayef has the right profile, a horse improving at the right time. There will probably be three other last-time winners in the race.

3) Qaspal

At the press conference last year when the weights for the Festival were unveiled, I remember the word going round that Qaspal had been too well treated, that he was in danger of missing the cut for the County Hurdle. Asked about it, someone connected to the horse was supposed to have said the plan was to win the Imperial Cup and get a penalty that would sneak him into the race.

The implication, that victory in the Imperial Cup could be taken for granted, that one of our better handicaps could be used as a means to an end, was pretty stunning. But that confidence was not misplaced because Qaspal won at Sandown in the style of a horse with plenty in hand. Even so, he still missed the cut for the County and has not been seen since his Imperial romp, a disappointing sequel to an exciting success.

I asked Philip Hobbs about Qaspal at the weights press conference a couple of weeks ago and was told that the horse was “in good order”. Hobbs had been unable to get a prep run into him because of “one or two minor issues with his hind legs, but it’s all fine now”.

Even on his new mark, 13lb higher than at Sandown, Qaspal is unlikely to get into the Coral Cup, though he may well scrape into the County and should certainly make the cut for the Martin Pipe. Frank Berry, representing the owner, JP McManus, says he is an intended runner, though the final choice of target has not been confirmed.

Qaspal’s long absence makes him unattractive to punters, so even some bookies who are offering ‘non-runner no bet’ have him at 16-1 for the County and 14-1 for the Martin Pipe. Both prices are worth taking.

4) Sybarite

Nigel Twiston-Davies has had 13 winners at the Festival, four of them in novice hurdles. He’s won the Supreme, two Neptunes and a Triumph, and this year I think he could add the Albert Bartlett.

His runner is Sybarite, a 16-1 shot with excellent form claims. He was second over two miles and five furlongs at Cheltenham’s November meeting, running on at the end despite having raced keenly and having smashed his way through the second-last.

His only other start over hurdles came on King George day at Kempton, when he was runner-up, beaten a length by a really promising horse of Nicky Henderson’s that had cost £260,000, Chablais.

An extra three furlongs looks sure to help Sybarite and the race in which he ran in November has been an excellent pointer. Four of the six Albert Bartlett winners ran in it and three were beaten but improved for the step up in trip.

Twiston-Davies really likes this horse. At his pre-Festival media day, he said: “If you’re going to break my arm as to what would be my next possible Imperial Commander, it would be Sybarite.”

Imperial Commander was seventh at the Festival in his novice hurdle season. Sybarite can do better.

5) De Boitron

Ferdy Murphy is another trainer with plenty of Festival success behind him, with nine victories to date. His stable often start the season poorly and pick up in time for the Festival but he’s leaving it late to hit form this time, his strike-rate percentage remaining in single digits since October.

Maybe I’m trying too hard but I can see positive signs from the yard’s recent runners. I hope his horses are at least able to run to their ordinary level of ability because De Boitron seems a fine candidate for the Grand Annual.

Pleasingly consistent, this seven-year-old has been out of the first three once in his last dozen starts. On his first visit to Cheltenham, last April, he stormed up the hill to win a conditional riders’ race and I can forgive him his poor showing back at the course in November, when everything from the yard seemed to need a run to reach peak fitness.

De Boitron’s second at Catterick last month was perfectly fair if you accept it was really a warm-up for this. Much better is clearly required but I have faith in the trainer’s ability to get him to peak, provided there really isn’t any bug that continues to afflict the yard.

You can get 20-1 with Victor Chandler, which seems too big. If the worst comes to the worst and I need a winner to get me out of the red in the Festival’s final race, this is the horse I hope to see in the line-up.

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