Queen Mother Champion Chase

Cheltenham Festival fever appears to have hit the country and I've been swamped with calls from friends, family and acquaintances asking me what I like for next week.

Very few of my friends and family (for that read 0) understand the concept of value and when I explain to them I'm not hunting for winners, I'm hunting for value their eyes glaze over and they say "just give me a winner."

The whole thing is getting to be a damn headache. Not the festival, I'm looking forward to that, just the once or twice a year bettors expecting me to pull a winner out of my a**e.

Does that sound grumpy and uncharitable?

Good, because that's how I'm feeling!

I'll get over it - I just need to decide what I consider the most likely winner of the week and wear it's name on a sign around my neck

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More Cheltenham Gossip:

French bred Saphir River, another of the French horses widely believed to be well in on their UK handicap mark, has created waves with a spectacular piece of work he did at Newbury on Sunday. Michael Scudamore said the he worked "very, very well" and he's "a very exciting horse"

Saphir's most likely target is the Pertemps Final and he might be worth a small each way interest at the currently available 25/1

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The Queen Mother Champion Chase

The Queen Mother has always been my favourite race of the festival It has seen some fantastic ding dong battles and some amazing horses over the years. Two of my all time favourite horses, Viking Flagship and Moscow Flyer, have been multiple winners of this and it's always the race I get most excited about each year.

That being said, this years event looks a fairly weak renewal with little strength in depth (in my opinion, I know others disagree!).

There are only 2 likely winners for me, Sizing Europe and Finian's Rainbow, and I would have them much closer in the betting than our bookmaking friends have.

I give Finian's rainbow a very decent chance of beating Sizing Europe, whose performances this season and last, I feel, have been seriously over rated. I still make Sizing Europe favourite(about 2/1 on my book) but not by much and all of the value lies in the 5/1 available for Finian's Rainbow.

Finian's Rainbow is my biggest bet of the festival at 5/1 each way

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 Finally today, I thought I'd point readers in the direction of a decent free betting resource.

Daily Punt is, as the name would suggest, a daily email giving general betting advice and normally a specific daily tip. I've been writing a few articles for them over recent months and they have a decent team put together over there. It's completely free to sign up for the emails and they know what they are talking about.

Sign up free for the Daily Punt here

 

That's it for today, I'll be back with my thoughts on the World Hurdle in the coming days.

Be lucky

Kieran