Cheltenham Festival day one LIVE!
The Tuesday of the Cheltenham Festival is the most anticipated day on the jump racing calendar, as months of preparation and conjecture finally comes to a head.
The big race of the day, the Champion Hurdle, has lost a key contender to last year’s winner Constitution Hill, but there are still plenty of stars ready to light up the opening day of the meeting.
When is the first day of the Cheltenham Festival?
The meeting starts today, Tuesday March 12. The first of seven races starts at 1:30 p.m. Scroll down for a full schedule.
How can I watch the Cheltenham Festival?
The first five races of each day of the meeting will be broadcast live and free on ITV1 and via streaming via ITVX. For coverage of the entire card, including the last two races of each day, Racing TV is the right place for you.
What races are on day 1 of the Cheltenham Festival?
1.30: Sky Bet Supreme beginner’s hurdle (grade 1)
Tip from Marlborough: Mystical power
2.10: Arkle Challenge Trophy Beginners Pursuit (Grade 1)
Tip from Marlborough: Il Etait Temps
2.50: Ultima Handicap Chase (Premier Handicap)
Tip from Marlborough: Stumptown
3.30: Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy (Grade 1)
Tip from Marlborough: Statesman
4.10: Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle (Grade 1)
Tip from Marlborough: Lossiemouth
4.50: Boodles Youth Disability Obstacle (Premier Handicap)
Tip from Marlborough: Batman Girac
5.30: National Hunt Challenge Cup Chase for Beginner Amateur Jockeys (Grade 2)
Tip from Marlborough: Corbett’s Cross
Cheltenham Festival day 1 tips
Marcus Armytage’s top choice
Mr Vango (National Hunt Chase, 5.30): Won the Devon National by 60 lengths in his last start, certainly remains the journey. If there is even a chink in the endurance of the good Irish horses, he will hunt them down. His trainer passed away last week – it is written in the stars.
Charlie Brooks’s top pick
Mr Vango (National Hunt Chase, 5.30): Mr Vango is the best value today. The eight-year-old gelding was the last winner to be officially trained by Gold Cup-winning trainer Mark Bradstock before he passed away last week. He definitely rode home some tough terrain in Exeter a few weeks ago, so any rain and divine help would be positive. Mr Vango is a classic Bradstock horse. Not overly raced and punched way above its weight.
Telegraph Sport’s top choice
Slade Steel (beginner’s hurdle, 1.30): The first two races of the meeting are wide open and are tempting punting propositions with big names at the top of both markets not active. Gaelic Warrior is temping in the Arkle, but Slade Steel looks like a tasty prize for the opening race of the meeting – the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.
He was beaten only twice in regulation, both times by Ballyburn – Wednesday’s red-hot favorite for the Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle. He was seven lengths behind Ballyburn at Leopardstown last month and that could be good enough to win this race, while others all have questions to answer.
At around 7/1 he is an excellent each-way bet to start the meeting.
What is the weather forecast?
There is a chance of a few showers on the opening day of the meeting, but these should be light and sporadic. The temperature will rise to a maximum of 12C.
The course on the Old Course (the circuit used on day one) is rated as gentle.
Mr. Vango would be a fitting winner, with a little help from divine intervention
By Marcus Armytage
There are few sports that do fate or fairy tale as well as horse racing and in addition to all those things that can be analyzed, such as the form of a horse, its assessment and its preference for certain conditions and courses, there is something that cannot be can be evaluated in the same way; divine intervention – if that is indeed what it is – is regularly an unstoppable force in the outcome of races.
Although the all-conquering Willie Mullins will be keen to win Tuesday’s National Hunt Chase, held in memory of the family matriarch Maureen Mullins, who died in February, there couldn’t have been a more poignant event on the first day of this year’s festival be a winner. than Mr Vango if he were to triumph a day before his trainer Mark Bradstock’s private funeral. Is it written in the stars?
Together with his wife Sara, an integral part of the partnership, Bradstock, 66, had never had more than a dozen horses in the yard, but was never short of a good one, whether it was his first Festival winner, King Harald, the Hennessy winner Carruthers, his brother the 2015 Gold Cup winner Coneygree, the Bet365 Gold Cup winner Step Back and, perhaps now, Mr Vango.
He is everything you would expect from a patiently brought Bradstock horse. He was ‘pinched’ under the noses of much bigger trainers for £30,000 after winning a British maiden point-to-point by 25 lengths two years ago and on his last start he provided the ailing trainer with his latest winner and a tonic that no oncologist can match; Coming home 60 lengths clear in the Devon National in Exeter.
You can either join the bookmakers in taking the view that the Exeter race fell apart, or you can take the contrasting view that it was he, with his brutal lead, who broke up the long-distance chase.
The Mullins pair of Corbetts Cross and Embassy Gardens, first and second in the betting, are both fitted with hoods for the first time, an increasing trend among Closutton runners, suggesting they may both have to switch off every three and three quarters of a mile to get. on Tuesday. And because Mr. Vango makes it a test of endurance, they will have to stay on every meter.
The latest example of an otherworldly result came when Highland Hunter, the favorite horse of ill-fated point-to-point rider Keagan Kirkby, won at Newbury, just a few days before he led the rider’s funeral procession in the west of the country . He enters the Ultima Handicap Chase, but with a £5 penalty for that win he needs some serious help from above and a bit of overtime from Kirkby.
However, if we are talking about absent friends then we must mention Constitution Hill, who is already on the poster for next year’s Festival just after the winning post, and who has been exempt from defending his Unibet Champion Hurdle title with a sick note.
Will the action be even poorer without the best jumper in the world? Of course, to some extent, but I doubt that means any tickets for Tuesday have been returned for refunds, and if the winner’s name appears on the honors board – probably last year’s State Man runner-up – history could be the horses records that he has defeated but no horses are listed that did not show up.
The timing of what we would call a chest infection is unfortunate, but his trainer Nicky Henderson is the man with an excellent record in the Champion Hurdle and with a second thought Iberico Lord can still win it for the 10th time.
Like Constitution Hill and, on Monday, Cleeve Hill, the setting for the next four days’ entertainment, his horses have been under a cloud, but for now at least we have to trust that they wouldn’t be here if the trainer and his vets felt they were not in good shape.
This race could be suitable for the rapidly improving six-year-old making the step from handicap to championship. He wouldn’t be the first horse to win the Betfair Hurdle on his way to winning the Champion Hurdle.
The main topic of conversation this week will be the supremacy of the Irish, or, more specifically, of one Irishman, Willie Mullins. He saddles almost half of the favorites.
If you’re looking for omens for the future, I suggest you take Cillian Murphy’s Oscar ahead of Ireland’s last-minute capitulation to England at Twickenham on Saturday. Britain won’t be without winners, but it’s hard to see the home side lifting the Prestbury Cup this year or anytime soon in the cycle of these things.
Mullins has odds-on from two bookmakers who have 10 (his 2022 record) or more winners, he is 16-1 and has five or fewer. Six is much the same for him and, currently at 94, six this year would make him the first man to have a century of winners at the festival. We’ll give you that Willie, but don’t win your mother’s race this year.
Looking for the latest Cheltenham Betting Offers? Our comprehensive list includes all the leading bookmakers