We have just launched a large number of ante-post markets, for the 2018 Cheltenham Festival. It won’t be too long, before the National Hunt season gets underway and race fans will be looking to see which are the best Cheltenham prospects right from the get-go!
You can already bet on the Arkle Chase, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the RSA Chase, the Ryanair Chase, the Stayers’ Hurdle, the Champion Chase, the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup.
View All Of Today’s Betting Markets Now!
Racing At Cheltenham
The racecourse, itself, is at Prestbury Park (Cheltenham). There are, actually, three separate courses. The New Course and the Old Course are used for most of the standard racing, while there is also a cross-country course. The racecourse is situated at Cleeve Hill and holds almost 70,000 spectators. While the Cheltenham Festival attracts most of the attention, racing takes place throughout the year.
Location
Cheltenham is an historic spa town in Gloucestershire. It is on the Cotswold borders, an area considered to be amongst the most picturesque in England. Cheltenham, today, is considered to be a very cultural city and there are various festivals for jazz, literature, science, food and drink.
The river Chelt is a tributary of the much bigger river Severn. The Chelt runs right through Cheltenham. Royal patronage, in the late 18th-century, made the town fashionable. It has long been considered a stylish place to live. Cheltenham is relatively wealthy and property prices reflect that.
Festival History
As for horse racing, Cheltenham race fixtures can be traced back to the year 1815. However, the Cheltenham Festival was not established until the very early part of the Nineteenth-Century. This is a National Hunt festival, which means that all of the races are over jumps and hurdles. While the Grand National still offers the most prize-money, it is Cheltenham that is considered to hold the most important races. This is where you will see the top jumpers competing in their prime. Festival races are very competitive, as the horses have been trained to peak for these big encounters.
Held in March, Cheltenham is the first major UK race meeting of the year. Usually, St Patrick’s Day falls during the Cheltenham Festival, making it even more popular with the thousands of Irish fans who make the trip. The amount of money that is bet on the big Cheltenham races is remarkable. Hundreds of millions of pounds are wagered, either at the course or online, by racing fans from all over the world.
Leicestershire Origins
The festival actually began life in the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. Various other locations hosted what was then known as the National Hunt Meeting, before Cheltenham became the permanent host in the early 1900s.
Betting With RaceBets
Create an account with RaceBets and you can not only take advantage of our exclusive welcome bonus, you will also find many special Cheltenham Festival promotions as the meeting approaches. Click here, to join RaceBets.
