With the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) over for another year, Andrew uses his latest column to discuss the impact the meeting is likely to have on Cheltenham next month as well as revealing sone other key festival punting angles…
DRF winners at Cheltenham
Since the DRF’s inception in 2018, 91 horses who won at Leopardstown attempted to follow up at the Cheltenham festival with 24 winning…
…backing all the qualifiers returned a profit of £24.77 to a £1 level stake at SP (+£37.31 at Betfair SP after 2% commission). Splitting the winners by race type makes interesting reading, with the hurdle and bumper qualifiers showing a big profit but the chasers producing significant losses…
Of those 91 DRF winners who next ran at Cheltenham, 61 had won in Grade 1 company at Leopardstown and they returned a loss over both fences and hurdles…
…29 of those started as favourite and though the strike-rate was high (51.72%) backing them blind returned a loss…
Last year, four of these started odds-on with three of them losing – Majborough (1-2), Ballyburn (4-7) and Galopin Des Champs (8-13).
Headgear
Hurdlers in first-time hoods
The past ten Cheltenham festivals have seen 40 hurdlers fitted with a hood for the first time and only one of those won – Kopek Des Bordes at odds of 4-6 last year…
Beaten favourites, hurdles only
Backing hurdlers at Cheltenham who were beaten when starting as favourite for another hurdle races last time out has been a poor punting angle at the last 15 festival, with only 11 winners from 373 runners (2.95% strike-rate) for a huge loss of £273.46 to a £1 level stake at SP (-£260.64 at Betfair SP after 2% commission)…
…the expected number of winners based on their odds was 21.18.
Impressive last time out hurdle winners
At the past ten Cheltenham festivals, 76 hurdlers lined up on the back of a hurdles win having received the comment “impressive” or “comfortably” from Proform. Twenty of those followed up for a profit of £24.73 to a £1 level stake at SP (+£45.65 at BSP after 2% commission)…
…ignoring the juvenile hurdlers (i.e. 4yos) improved the profits…
Back every runner in every race at Betfair SP
Sounds daft, doesn’t it? But, since 2019, backing every runner in every race at the Cheltenham festival achieved the following results…
…a profit of £382.14 (after 2% commission) or +12.55% on turnover. There were two losing years in the seven-year sample (2024 and 2022). The shock results tend to come on the New Course (Thursday/Friday), usually in the Foxhunters or Albert Bartlett and splitting the seven-year sample by day of the week is very revealing…
…this is the Friday breakdown by year…
Sires
Backing progeny of the sire Jeremy at the Cheltenham festival would have found seven winners from 41 bets (17.07% strike-rate) for a profit of £29.58 to a £1 level stake at SP (+£38.66 at Betfair SP after 2% commission). ..
…in handicaps only the score was three from 18 (+£34.00, +£42.62 BSP) with six of the 15 beaten horses placing, often at big prices (28-1, 25-1, 12-1, 12-1. 10-1, 9-1 and 100-30).
Trainers
Willie Mullins In Handicap Chases
My database goes back to 1997 and in that time, Willie Mullins has saddled 54 runners in handicap chases at the Cheltenham festival and all 54 lost…
…the expected number of winners was 3.10.