Dave Young’s love for the Cheltenham Festival is always on overdrive and our resident Weekend Watch star and trends guru is already counting down to the four fabulous days at Prestbury Park in March. With the National Hunt season fast approaching characteristically all roads will start leading to Cheltenham and punters will be delving through the ante-post markets to try and unearth some value.
Well, Dave has taken an in-depth look at the current markets for the 2026 Cheltenham Festival and picked out ten races and assessed the chances of the ante-post favourite for the race.
Kicking off with the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, which sees last year’s Champion Bumper winner Bambino Fever heading the latest betting, Dave then works his way through a flurry of races before ending with the blue riband event, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Reigning champion Inothewayurthinkin is the market leader, at the time of writing, but he could have the small matter of trying to get the better of dual Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs again, who is sure to be targeted again at the race by Willie Mullins.
There’s plenty of trials, prep races and much more to come over the winter months before the spring festival spark into action, but there’s never a time not to think about the Cheltenham Festival and Dave Young kicks off his journey to GL50 with a fascinating insight to the current market leaders.
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