Cheltenham 11/3/25 - Money for Nothing

As is my festival wont, I am writing the preamble the night before so I have no idea, at this point, how we've done. I do know that, despite attempts to generate a more competitive card, we may still be looking at 4 out of 7 races with odds on shots. Betting without and forecast markets shouldn't be a staple of our Cheltenham offering but they may be.

A more competitive card was one of the stated aims of the organisers after last year's processional feel. The other one was to engage the local community to pull together and offer better value, accommodation wise, to encourage folk to stop going to Benidorm for a week for much the same price as a couple of hours in the local Cheltenham B&B. How's that going then? Well, the Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce mouthpiece has declared that it's a "rosy picture" and that "hotels are not being greedy" despite former Cheltenham racecourse boss describing the accommodation situation last year as "A serious issue".

Holiday Inn have a budget brand called "Holiday Inn Express". It's a bit like Premier Inn/Travelodge. They are advertising a room on Tuesday night at 683 quid. Yep, £683. Answers on a postcard for how else you can spend £683. I'll kick it off. We stayed in a 3 bed air conditioned lodge type thing with covered decking on the banks of Lake Garda for 12 days last October for £577. I get unlimited golf at probably the best inland courses in Scotland (45 holes if you're wondering), outside of Gleneagles, for 12 whole months for about 300 quid more than I could bunk down in an identikit hotel room for 8 hours.

The racetrack themselves, this year, have been a bit yin and yang. They recognised they had pushed prices to their limit last year but their response was merely a price freeze, not a reduction. For comparison purposes, Royal Ascot recognised the same issue with their Silver Ring offering and slashed prices for 2025. They've been rewarded with a 50% increase in pre sales to this point. I don't know how things will look crowd wise this time on Friday night but pre sales rumours are concerning. Having said that, Cheltenham have abandoned their restriction on alcohol consumption which had led to the ridiculous situation of punters either a) being jam packed into places like the Guinness Village whilst the racing was on, watching on a big screen, rather than in real life, despite the action being 20 yards away or b) bolting their self poured 8 quid Guinness in order to catch the action. Binge drinking being the unintended consequence of a policy which was, presumably, a knee jerk reaction to one idiot throwing a plastic cup of beer the previous year somewhere I've forgotten. Anyway, hopefully the relaxation on crowd movement will make up for the expected lower overall crowd numbers.

Before we get to the betting blog, I know you'll be desperate to know the results of Kevin's first foray into the sausage purchasing market since last year's Ascot debacle. Happy to report no errors, mainly as a result of me taking over the grocery purchase duties. Deluxe breakfast sausages with soft rolls and HP sauce. I'm keeping the job.

1) Doubles, trebles and accas meant a chunky liability on jolly Kopek De Bordes. We thought we had a sniff at the last but it was not to be and we got off to a poor start with places making matters worse. Nicked a little back in the without and forecast markets but memories of last year's Tuesday misery weren't far away.

2) And Majborough looked likely to add to our woes but terrible mistakes at the last two meant we head a bona fide jackpot on Jango Baie which must've hit a million in running plus a virtual skinner in the supplementary "without" market and we had a monster. We were acutely aware that we were the beneficiary of some enormous luck though as a couple of half decent jumps sees the jolly win with ease. Gift horse and mouth and all that.

3) First of the patented CairnBet bingo books with 6 losers dotted throughout the book, including original fav The Changing Man. The winner was avoided despite being backed into favouritism, a little solidarity from our local trainer Lucinda Russell. A reminder to thank her next time our paths cross in a car park somewhere.

4) Lossiemouth. Brilliant golf course, less brilliant result. If you get a chance to play it don't hesitate and then think of our big backwards step compounded by a similarly poor "without" result. Still well ahead but a poor one.

5) You'll be reading this expecting it to be a monster result. Don't get me wrong, it was a good one, but when you're opening 8/11 ish and they only want one horse, then said horse crashes into 1/2 with a liability of eye watering proportions (to us at least) you ain't got much value in your book. We aren't Bet 365 so I can't claim we could stand it for everything we took and getting it back at minus value leached any margin away. Steve pulled out a decent hedge from somewhere and a small late drift as they kept betting it repaired a chunk of the damage to the book but the general feeling amongst my colleagues was that none of us could get the full whack out of what was, on paper, the result of a lifetime. In perspective we won more than twice as much on the Majborough race,

6) Bingo again and 4th in the list in a 22 runner handicap doesn't smell of jackpot territory and the modest win we had was more than wiped out by, literally, the 4 worst place results in the book. Tiny step backwards overall.

7) Smashed up into favouritism, gagged up, laid plenty to connections and it never looked like losing. My mate on the front line told me with a mile and a half to go what was going to happen- I wish he'd been wrong but he's too good for that. A bad end. So, really, a 3-3 plus a bore draw overall but the 3 in our favour were very good and we have got off to a much better start than we could've expected. It was possible to lose 5-2 on those results and, we have to be honest, we've had a huge amount of luck on two of the three big results we did hit as Majborough wins without calamitous mistakes and who knows re Constitution Hill which could easily have been a 7-0 drubbing. We are not kidding ourselves that chucking it in on the short ones on a Tuesday at Cheltenham is a recipe for guaranteed success and we can only hope that they find a way to make it more competitive next year. But we've been saying that for years... Will be a short one tomorrow as the days are long and the work is hard. Until then...