Festival Focus - Champion Hurdle 2015

C-Irv Ball - Irving is my speculative outside bet to sneak a place in Tuesday's feature.

This year’s Champion Hurdle and Arkle currently leave me in somewhat of a quandary, because having backed the two now short-priced favourites for both races a while back and got something actually resembling a decent(ish) price I want to tip both for each respective race but I can’t bring myself to tip even money and odds on shots in Cheltenham festival races.

I truly believe that Faugheen and Un De Sceaux will both win on the opening day and in the process create yet another ‘Ruby Tuesday’ but with their prices both long gone the task now is finding some semblance of value left in both races so as not to come across like one of the many ‘boom merchants’ you find on Twitter these days celebrating ‘tipping’ a horse that is odds on.

The obvious value call in the Champion Hurdle is Jezki each-way at 6/1 as the big three look like being tough to keep out of the places. It seems lazy to simply go for that easy option though even if a seemingly easy return is usually desperately needed during Cheltenham week!

Beaten three times by Hurricane Fly this season Jezki was even beaten for second by Arctic Fire last time out, throwing an element of doubt on the big three will be the 1-2-3 argument mentioned above.

He did make a pretty serious blunder at the last flight that day though and his season has charted a similar course to last year when he of course claimed glory in this race.

I do think he’ll be seen to better effect at the festival, but I’m greedy and an eternal optimist so I’m going to look for a horse at a bigger price that could capitalise should one of the big three not fire and miss the frame.