The Cheltenham Festival will leap into life this March and the famous ‘Cheltenham roar’ could last even longer than usual if some of the meeting’s more fancied runners can help give the nation’s leading bookmakers a dismal four days on the Cotswolds.
You can take a look at all the best free bets ahead of the Festival here.
For the 200,000 people that attend the Festival and wager £600m on the event, the four-day showpiece can often turn into a slog with the bookmakers and the clash in the betting ring is almost as pulsating as the action on the track. More often than not racing fanatics leave Prestbury Park having paid for the layer’s summer jaunts and it has always been a highly profitable meeting for the nation’s leading bookies.
A ferociously competitive card including 26 races worth more than £5.75m means that even the shrewdest of form students can be up against it when they make their selections and take their hard earned cash to the betting ring.
The monumental clash between the top English and Irish horses helps encourage the betting activity and your everyday punter needs stamina in abundance if they are in with a chance of winning the war with their rivals.
But while tackling the layers at Cheltenham can often be harder than the daunting fences themselves, a number of short-priced favourites in some of the meeting’s leading races could have the bookies ducking for cover in 2012.
The winners of last year’s four championship races will all be aiming to heap the misery on the layers and Hurricane Fly, Sizing Europe, Big Buck's and Long Run will carry the hopes of battle-hardened punters looking to profit at Prestbury Park.
It had originally been a 50/1 shot that all four champions could return to Cheltenham and defend their crowns in the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, World Hurdle and Gold Cup, but those odds have been embraced by canny racing fans and the 20/1 with
Sportingbet on offer will still make plenty of appeal to ante post players.
If all four were to score then it would leave the bookies battered and bruised, but that won’t deter their enthusiasm and the industry’s leading high-street betting firms will be looking to take on all of the fancied runners at the meeting.
They will be hoping that the Festival will once again prove that the betting industry is almost recession-proof and they’ll be working tirelessly to secure new customers and lock them in for a profitable week of racing. The more adventurous bookmakers will be launching sensational promotions and money-back specials in a bid to lure in fresh-faced punters and they will still be confident that they can revel in another ultra-successful meeting.
However, if the four returning champions make the bookmakers pay for their bravery then the roars of happy punters will last long into the summer and the layers won’t be able to get out of the Cotswolds quickly enough.
