Festival Focus - Queen Mother Champion Chase 2015

Festival Fever - Champagne Fever can enhance his fine festival record in the Champion Chase.

With the exception of the Champion Hurdle in which realistically there’s probably only three horses that can win it – and even then I’m firmly in the Faugheen is a machine camp – the championship races at this year’s Cheltenham festival are all as wide open as I’ve ever known them.

No championship race though is perhaps more intriguing than the Champion Chase which will see the last two winners finally lock horns properly after both returning from lengthy absences.

Throw in to the mix a couple of young upstarts from the mighty Paul Nicholls as well as a horse campaigned over further this term but now dropping back to a trip he has a second to none festival record over and you have all the ingredients for an explosive showdown.

For many though the race revolves around whether Sprinter Sacre and Sire De Grugy are still the forces of old.

King George VI Chase 2014 Ante Post Preview

Fill Your Boots - Ma Filleule is the value call in the King George

One of the tropes of the festive season is that after weeks of build-up and anticipation the big moment comes and goes in a matter of minutes, and much like that dawn start on Christmas morning for an excitable child the King George will be over in a flash on a Boxing Day but it will hopefully leave us with that warm wintery glow if we can find the winner.

The world of ante-post betting is rapidly becoming a thing of the past sadly, with most firms pushing favoured horses out to prices greater than they’ve been in the build-up to the race come race day morning.

Current market leaders, and the most likely winners, Silviniaco Conti and Champagne Fever will both almost certainly be available at a similar price or bigger come the day of the race so for the purposes of this preview will be passed over.

The Willie Mullins grey is actually the horse I think will take all the beating in this year’s renewal of the Boxing Day spectacular, but unless you managed to grab some of the fancy prices available about him before his seasonal reappearance or in the immediate aftermath of that victory he’s now surely short enough in the betting at a general 7/2.

If the ground was to come up very testing then the 11/4 on last year’s winner Silviniaco Conti could look a late Christmas gift, however given the forecast that seems unlikely at this stage and Conti now looks like an out and out stayer.

Festival Focus - Champion Bumper

Big Willie Style - I'm hoping Mullins can win the Bumper again with Clondaw Court

The Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival can often be more of a minefield than some of the notoriously tricky-to-solve handicap races.

One stat that can always guide you though is that Willie Mullins usually has a very strong hand for the race – as evidenced by Champagne Fever’s victory in the race last year – and this year is no exception with several of the leading contenders at this stage looking likely to come from the Mullins yard.

The form of last year’s race is already working out very well this season with several of the horses from last year’s Bumper coming out and performing to a very high level this year, notably Jezki and The New One; so it is always a race to take note of for the following season’s novice hurdlers.

This year’s renewal also looks to feature a crop of horses that could potentially go on to achieve great things, but at this stage, knowing so little about many of them, it’s hard to know which will make it and which will sink without a trace.