Today sees the start of the Cheltenham festival. The three days for which every good horse in the country is trained. As you may be aware there has always been a close tie between racing and football. In the past it may have been players passing their afternoons in the bookies.
Now it¹s more likely to be players owning horses. Indeed the main race today, The Champion Hurdle, features Intersky Falcon, a horse part owned by our own Michael Ball along with Terry McDermott, Allan Shearer and others. He has a good chance of success in the race itself with his trainer Johnjo O'Neill declaring that he would choose to ride him over his other horse and race favourite Rhinestone Cowboy.
However Rhinestone Cowboy is very much a talking horse. He has been impressive in all his wins but has never been under pressure in his hurdles outings so far. It remains to be seen how much he will find off the bridle. It must also be remembered that his only defeat came at Cheltenham last year in the Cheltenham Bumper where he travelled supremely well before going down by a neck to Pizarro.
The horse to be interested in here though is ROOSTER BOOSTER. He is undefeated this year, has the highest rating of any of the runners, and loves the course at Cheltenham where he won the County Hurdle at last year¹s festival. He should be around 6/1 and should be excellent each-way value to save your stakes should Rhinestone Cowboy prove to be up to the hype.
As always the support card at the festival is very interesting indeed. A quick look at the other races shows one or two to be interested in. The first race of the festival is the Supreme Novices Hurdle. A race won last year by Champion Hurdle hopeful Like A Butterfly. This was the race originally pencilled in for the afore mentioned Rhinestone Cowboy.
However, his defection leaves the way open for Back In Front. He has followed much the same route as Like A Butterfly before him. The only doubt about taking too short a price being that he is unlikely to have faced ground as quick as Cheltenham normally is at this time of year.
Another race to enjoy is the Arkle Chase over 2 miles for novice chasers. It is a race to enjoy rather than to bet on. But Adamant Approach should have every chance. He may well have won Like A Butterfly¹s race at the festival last year but for falling at the last and he has jumped like a natural on his chase outings so far. The down side being that he has never jumped fences as quickly as he will have to here.
Other races not to get too heavily involved in today include The Wm Hill NH Chase and the Pertemps Final. I shall be having a small stakes each way double on Joss Naylor who has already won on the course this year in the former and Ravenswood , if the going is no worse than good in the Pertemps final. Ravenswood had a very successful period at this time last year and the feeling is that he could just be coming to himself at the right time.
So that¹s it for day one. Let¹s hope our efforts are rewarded and if notmaybe Intersky Falcon can give Michael a boost.