Cheltenham Festival day 4 guide: Gold Cup tips, weather and today's other races
The four-day Cheltenham Festival concludes today with one final chance for punters to score that big winner. Much of the money wagered on the final day will be on the Gold Cup at 3.30pm.
Scroll down or click here for our best bets for day four, our racing correspondent explaining why he’s backing Gerri Colombe to impress in the Cheltenham showpiece. Or read our history lesson on ten great Gold Cups and celebrity tips for the Gold Cup.
The meeting got under way on Tuesday and concludes today (Friday, March 15), with Willie Mullins already having a week to remember, bringing up his 100th Festival winner on Wednesday. The first of seven races today is off at 1.30pm. Scroll down for a full schedule.
The first five races will be broadcast live free-to-air on ITV1 and on streaming via ITVX. For coverage of the entire card, including the final two races, Racing TV is the place to go.
1.30: JCB Triumph Hurdle (Grade 1)
Best bet: Storm Heart
2.10: County Handicap Hurdle (Premier Handicap)
Best bet: So Scottish
2.50: Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Best bet: Captain Teague
4.10: St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Open Hunters’ Chase
Best bet: Its On The Line
4.50: Paddy Power Mares’ Chase (Grade 2)
Best bet: Dinoblue
5.30: Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle
Best bet: Quai De Bourbon
Light showers will remain in the area throughout the morning and afternoon at Cheltenham but there should be periods of sunshine as well. Temperatures will peak at around 12C.
The latest going report is soft on the New Course.
Gerri Colombe (Cheltenham Gold Cup, 3.30): Each morning this week I have ridden out for Gordon Elliott, whose horses had been hitting the bar until Teahupoo landed the Stayers on Thursday. I have not quite decided whether getting too close to one yard is an advantage or disadvantage but, until Friday night at least, let us presume it is a positive.
The standout eye-catching horse in his string on Thursday was his Gold Cup horse Gerri Colombe, runner-up to The Real Whacker in last year’s Brown Advisory when he just failed to get up in the last strides.
He was being ridden out by event rider Laura Collett, the Olympic and Badminton winning event rider who described him as ‘bouncing’ and different to any other racehorse she has ever sat on. “You can tell the good ones,” she said. To me he looks better value to me than the favourite.
Gidleigh Park (Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, 2.50): Remains unbeaten after four starts under rules and looks a proper candidate to offer British resistance to the Irish dominance in the Graded contests. Was entered for the two and a half mile race as well but Harry Fry is clearly keen on him going further. By the way he battled up the hill to win the Challow at the end of January, he may well improve for the extra distance. Mullins brings a powerful squad to the table this might be one to upset the apple cart.
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The reigning champion, Galopin Des Champs, is going to be hard to unseat and in all likelihood he will cap a brilliant week for Willie Mullins. It may even be that he is on the way to becoming the next Best Mate but if you are looking for a chink in his armour it could be that he either wins easily or comes out second best if it comes down to a slog. He is surely meeting a better field on Friday than he did when he won 12 months ago and he could be vulnerable in a dog fight.
It is 2-1 to Fastorslow in three meetings with Galopin des Champs since last year’s race so if anyone knows how to take the champion down it is Fastorslow’s trainer, Martin Brassil, the quietly spoken but highly respected National winning Curragh trainer. He has been very positive about the eight-year-old’s chances over the Gold Cup trip.
His form ties in with Corach Rambler who beat him a neck getting 4lbs in last year’s Ultima. Only two horses – Golden Miller and L’Escargot – have won a National and Gold Cup but the Scottish horse does love Cheltenham and were Lucinda Russell’s charge to succeed he would be the first from Scotland to win in the race’s 100-year history. He looked the horse to take out of the Betfair Chase when third and wherever Fastorslow is, Corach should not be rambling too far away.
Like a car that runs out of fuel in sight of the petrol station, to me Bravemansgame looks like he finds the last 100 yards here tantalisingly out of his range. He was beaten by Gentlemansgame earlier in the season but Mouse Morris’s runner is a novice in all but name having only run three times over fences. Any overnight rain will bring Nassalam and L’Homme Presse into play.
Gerri Colombe has only ever been beaten twice, once in the Brown Advisory and once, by 23 lengths, by Galopin Des Champs at Leopardstown at Christmas when the yard was out of form. Even so he had Capodanno and I Am Maximus behind him that day. This is his stiffest test in terms of distance and he will relish it.
The each-way chance of the race and the horse which is capable of causing an upset is The Real Whacker, one of the two horses to have beaten Gerri Colombe. He has been gradually brought to the boil by Patrick Neville and appears to be another who saves his best for this corner of the Cotswolds.
GOLDEN MILLER 1935: The great chaser of the inter-war years who won it an unequalled five consecutive times between 1932 and 1936 and raised the race’s profile from Grand National trial to nearing its status of jump racing’s blue riband. Thomond II was his big rival at the time and a record crowd came to see them. There was nothing between the big two at the second last and though the ‘Miller’ was half a length up at the last Thomond jumped level only for Golden Miller to prevail by three quarters of a length in a record time. When they pulled up Thomond’s jockey Billy Speck turned to winning jockey Jerry Wilson and said: “When we are old and sitting back enjoying a drink, we can tell them how we did ride at least one great horse race one day in our lives.”
ARKLE 1964: Generally reckoned to be the greatest steeplechaser of all time, Arkle largely scared off his rivals in ‘65 and ‘66 but, in his first, he took on the reigning champion, Mill House. The race was run on a Saturday (for the first and only time). It was not long after Sonny Liston’s shock defeat to Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali) for the world heavyweight championship and this was considered racing’s equivalent. Mill House had beaten Arkle in that season’s Hennessy Gold Cup and was odds-on. They jumped the second last together but Arkle was in charge turning in and as he accelerated clear to win by five lengths commentator Peter O’Sullevan said: “This is the best we’ve seen for a long time.” No one could argue with that.
MASTER SMUDGE 1980: A winner by default after the front-running Tied Cottage, who had fallen at the last when winning in 1979, comfortably won but failed a post-race drugs test for a miniscule amount of something which was found to have come from contaminated horse feed. Where do you start for the stories here? Tied Cottage’s owner, Anthony Robinson, an amateur rider who won the 1979 Irish National on the horse despite being weakened by terminal cancer, died shortly after handing over the Gold Cup to Master Smudge’s owner that summer. Dan Moore, his trainer, also died that summer while Master Smudge was sold by his breeder to local gypsies for a crate of whiskey, sold on for £75 which represented a 50 per cent profit to a Bridgwater pig farmer who sold him on, as a two-year-old for £312 to his trainer Arthur Barrow.
DAWN RUN 1986: If you are looking for the roots of the current Mullins family domination, look no further than the mare trained by family patriarch, Paddy Mullins. Only one horse has ever won the Champion Hurdle over two miles and Gold Cup over fences and three and a quarter miles; one Cheltenham’s greatest test of speed, the other a greater test of stamina. She was essentially a novice as it was only her fifth start over fences. At the last it looked a lost cause. Wayward Lad and Forgive ‘N Forget were duelling for the lead but, half way up the run-in, Jonjo O’Neill coaxed one last effort from the mare who the Irish had sent off favourite. “The mare’s beginning to get up,” remains one of the late Sir Peter O’Sullevan’s most iconic lines.
BREGAWN 1983: We talk about the domination of Willie Mullins these days but for a very short time Michael Dickinson, who had taken over from his father Tony, at Harewood in Yorkshire was in charge of the most powerful yard in the land. He had won the 1982 race, in his second season, with Silver Buck but his five runners in 1983, headed by the Graham Bradley ridden Bregawn, led home a stable 1-2-3-4-5. For the record completing the ‘Famous Five’ were Captain John in second, Wayward Lad third, Silver Buck fourth and Ashley House fifth.
DESERT ORCHID 1989: ‘Dessie’ was already a horse who transcended racing before he went to Cheltenham, (he had failed to win at five previous Festival attempts), in conditions so wet - the fire brigade and helicopters were employed to try and dry it out - they probably would not be considered acceptable today. David Elsworth’s exuberant grey wore his heart on his sleeve, was campaigned in handicaps and graded races alike over trips ranging between two miles and three and three quarters and only Arkle and Red Rum had resonated with the public beyond racing’s parish boundaries. This was his crowning moment though as he rallied after the last under Simon Sherwood to overhaul the mud-loving Yahoo in an absolute epic. Over the three days of that meeting the Irish returned no winners for the first time in 40 years.
BEST MATE 2004: Since Arkle no horse had managed to win three consecutive Gold Cups but Henrietta Knight managed to achieve that feat with the Jim Lewis owned Jim Culloty ridden Best Mate. It should not be underestimated how hard it is to get a horse to an annual target in the form of their lives several years in a row. Knight had spotted him a point-to-point in Ireland and against the backdrop of the late flourishing love story between the trainer and her husband Terry Biddlecome who won the race on Woodland Venture, Best Mate might not have been an Arkle but he loved Cheltenham and he matched him with three wins.
DENMAN 2008: It may seem a little incongruous to pick Denman, ‘The Tank,’ over his two-time Gold Cup winning stablemate Kauto Star, whose triumphs sandwiched his but the 2008 race was the talk of pubs up and down the land; Denman, last season’s star staying novice, or Kauto, the king? The liver chestnut Denman, however, was the embodiment of the old fashioned staying chaser and had a set of lungs to match. In the race Sam Thomas sent him on with a circuit to go and the writing was on the wall four out when the jockey took a look under his arm to see how his rivals were travelling. They, including the runner-up Kauto Star, were all toiling and he went on to win by seven lengths. His joint owner Harry Findlay, a professional punter, reckoned to win £1.5m in bets. Denman then suffered from an irregular heart-beat but still finished second in two more Gold Cups.
CONEYGREE 2015: The dream which, ultimately, sustains racing is that against the big-spending all-conquering big yard a small one with an inexpensive or homebred horse can still win its biggest races. In that respect Coneygree’s victory in 2015 for Mark and Sara Bradstock was worth five times any marketing campaign. One of only a dozen horses in their yard, the tall, leggy homebred out of mare called Plaid Maid who cost £3,000 before winning seven races herself, Coneygree’s long levers were as much his asset as they were his Achilles heel but when he was right he was formidable and he is the last of a handful of novices to win the race.
A PLUS TARD 2022: Jenny Pitman, Henrietta Knight and Jessica Harrington have all won Gold Cups but the race would be 98 years old before a female jockey would win it. Rachael Blackmore had already won nearly every race worth having, including two Champion Hurdles on Honeysuckle and the Grand National on Minella Times. The Gold Cup was the final piece in the jigsaw. A year earlier she had picked the ‘wrong’ one choosing A Plus Tard over stablemate Minella Indo. This year she stuck to her guns, went with A Plus Tard and there was no stopping them. He reversed the previous year’s form in no certain style sprinting clear of Minella Indo from the second last to win by 15 lengths and break the last ‘glass ceiling’ for female jockeys in jump racing.
Mike Tindall - former England rugby union player
Galopin Des Champs “I like a back-to-back pick, so if that can go in at 5/4 … it’s not an easy race, but Mullins is just unbelievable at the moment, so unless something massive happens with the weather it would be quite nice to have a back-to-back winner. It’s always nice to retain.”
Ricky Hatton - former pro boxer
Monkfish “I don’t like fish, but when I do have fish I have monk.”
Stephen Mulhern - Dancing on Ice presenter
Monkfish “I just like the name.”
Dame Denise Lewis - Olympian
L’Homme Presse “That’s got to be a French horse, but it’s clearly not going to win. With the amount of Irish punters here, it’s not going to get any of the luck. I’m going with that though.”
Vogue Williams - model and DJ
Galopin Des Champs “I’m going to go for Galopin Des Champs. I’ve got to go for Mullins.”
Alastair Stewart - Newscaster
Gerri Colombe/Hewick “My late paternal grandfather, who was a sergeant in the Highland Light Infantry, liked a bit of a flutter and his simple rule was “third letter r”. That rule has, occasionally in the past, looked after me very, very nicely. Not least at Cheltenham. The other one I like is Hewick.”
Kirsty Gallacher - former Sky Sports presenter
Fastorslow “It’s the second favourite, I quite like that. It’s an underdog of sorts.”
Lee Westwood - pro golfer
Bravemansgame “Let’s be different and have a go at Bravemansgame each-way. You never know.”
James Haskell - former England rugby union player
Galopin Des Champs “He’s the favourite, that’ll do.”
Ben Miller - former Death in Paradise star
Monkfish “I’m a big fan of Monkfish. I’ve followed Monkfish since the early days. I’m really happy for how that fish is doing.”
Jorgie Porter - Hollyoaks actress
Gentlemansgame “My fiance Ollie is watching The Gentlemen on Netflix.”
Robert Bathurst - Cold Feet actor
L’Homme Presse/Hewick “With the heart, L’Homme Presse would be my pick. Hewick as well. Both of them are good each-way bets I would’ve thought. It’s not a forgone conclusion, so it’s a good race. It’s a shame Shishkin is out. Would’ve, could’ve, it’s not happening, so we’ve got to play with what we’ve got.”
Jeremy Guscott - former England rugby union player
Monkfish“I like eating monkfish.”
Alex Cuthbert - Welsh rugby player
Gerri Colombe “If the ground stays soft.”
Thomas Skinner - Apprentice star and businessman
Monkfish “Because it’s my favourite fish”.
JJ Chalmers - TV presenter and Invictus Games medallist
Jungle Boogie “I would’ve gone for Shishkin, but I’ll throw £1 at Jungle Boogie. I know about a Jungle Boogie from my time on Strictly.”
Marnie Swindells - Apprentice winner
Gentlemansgame“I’m in the world of boxing, so I have to go for Gentlemansgame.”
Reece Donnell - Apprentice star
Galopin Des Champs “I just came back from France this week, so I’m going to go with him.”
Mica McNeill - retired British bobsledder
Fastorslow “Fastorslow is standing out for me. Anything with a speed name in there is going to stand out for me.”
