Top races at Cheltenham in 2023
The Cheltenham horse racing festival held annually at the Cheltenham racecourse in Gloucestershire is one of the most extensive and well-known events on the horse racing calendar, second only to the grand national.
The festival grows each year in popularity, and the numbers are there to back it up, in 2021, a record amount of over 70 million bets were taken totaling over £210M, showing a 40% increase since the 2019 event.
Of the many different races available to bet on, the four main events that stand out are the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase, and the Stayers’ Hurdle.
The champion Hurdle is a grade 1 national hunt race open to horses aged four years and over. The race is run over a distance of about 2 miles and consists of 8 hurdles to be jumped. The race is one of the opening events at the festival and, as the name suggests, is the most prestigious hurdling event on the national hunt calendar.
The Queen Mother Champion Chase is a grade 1 notional hunt steeplechase, which is open to horses five years and older. The steeplechase is a distance race in which the horses are required to jump diverse fences and ditch obstacles over a distance of about 2 miles. There are a total of thirteen fences to be jumped and will put both horse and jockey through their paces.
The Stayers Hurdle race is a grade 1 event and is open to horses aged four years and over. There is a total of twelve hurdles to be jumped over a distance of about 3 miles. It is a leading long-distance event on the notional hunt calendar and a featured race on the third day of the Cheltenham Festival
The Cheltenham Gold cup is the most prestigious event of all. It is a grade 1 event open to horses five years and older and is run over a distance of just over 3 miles. There are a total of 22 fences to be jumped and will no doubt push both jockey and racehorse to their limits. The event is sometimes referred to as the Blue Riband of jump-racing and, in 2021, offered a prize fund of over £400,000.
There are variety of betting options to be placed on the gold cup and any of the other events at the festival. The most popular types of bets to be taken are the “Straight Bets”. There are three types of betting options here, a Win, Place, or Show. A win, as the name suggests, requires your horse to win the race to gain a payoff. The “Place” bet requires your horse to place first or second to pay out, and the “Show” bet requires your horse to finish in the top 3 in order to gain a pay out.
Secondly, you get “combination straight bets”, there are two ways of betting with this type. You can place an “Across the board” bet which is a combination of straight bets placed as one. You are betting that the horse will win, place and show. If the horse wins, you collect on all three bets. Should the horse come second, you collect on the place and show, and a third place you will collect on the show only.
The second type of combination straight bet is a Win/Place or a Place/Win bet. As the name suggests, you are betting either for the horse to win or come in second or either a win and a third place.
Following this, there are exotic single bets and multiple exotic bets. These betting types can become quite complicated and are suggested for the more advanced horse racing gamblers.
The 2023 Cheltenham festival will offer more than enough betting opportunities for veteran and novice punters alike, and no doubt the coming event will be bigger and better than the previous event. Good knowledge of the favourite horses and jockeys beforehand will no doubt be invaluable information to you as a potential punter looking to make some good bets at the upcoming Cheltenham Festival.
