Three rules to follow for the Cheltenham Festival

There have been 18 Irish-trained winners at each of the last three Cheltenham Festivals and the early betting suggests that it will be something similar next week as there is an Irish favourite in at least 20 of the 28 races.

At time of writing, champion trainer Willie Mullins has 10 favourites. Leading owner J.P. McManus also has 10. These two giants of the game combine for four market-leaders, namely Majborough (Tuesday), Kopeck De Mee (multiple entries), Fact To File (Thursday) and Dinoblue (Friday).

Mullins had a record 10 winners at the 2022 Festival. A further nine victories last year brought him to a career total of 103 Cheltenham Festival winners since his first success there in 1995. That’s a record and he is 30 winners ahead of next best Nicky Henderson, who started 10 years earlier than Mullins.

While Mullins has been top dog at the festival 11 times in the past 14 years, Gordon Elliott has managed to take the title twice – he had six winners there in 2017 and eight the following year.

Elliott, who has a total of 40 festival winners to his name in just 13 years, is having a particularly good season and is a man to follow next week. Brighterdaysahead (Tuesday), The Yellow Clay (Wednesday), Kalypso’chance (Wednesday), The Wallpark (Thursday) and Teahupoo (Thursday) are rating among his top prospects, but watch him in the handicaps too.

If Elliott has achieved a lot in a short space of time, what about Gavin Cromwell?

The Navan-based trainer used to be a farrier for Elliott and only trained his first winner 11 years ago He burst onto the big-race scene in 2019 with Espoir D’Allen, winner of the Champion Hurdle.

Two years later Flooring Porter won the Stayers’ Hurdle and repeated the achievement in 2022. He’s had three other festival winners and, on the back of his best-ever season, it’s almost unthinkable he will not have a winner or two next week.

Names to note are Stumptown and Vanillier (same race on Wednesday), Sixanadahalf (Thursday), Thecompanysergeant (Thursday) and Hello Neighbour (Friday).

As always, it is sure to be four days of high-octane drama, and punters must remain cool and calm if they want to last the pace.

Here’s three rules to help you make a profit.

Do the jackpot

This is a Tote bet requiring you to select a placed horse in each of the first six races. Over the last five Cheltenham Festivals, the average Placepot payout for a €1 winning Placepot has been €7,126.

Seek value

The average odds of winners at the Cheltenham Festival is just over 10/1. Instead of having €10 on the favourite, consider having two or three smaller bets at bigger odds.

Nicky’s revenge

Last year leading British trainer Nicky Henderson was forced to withdraw almost all his Cheltenham runners due to sickness in the yard. You can bet he has been planning to put that right this year. Keep all his runners on-side, especially Impose Toi who runs either on Wednesday or Friday.