Seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival Favorites To Look Out For

Posted: March 12, 2019

Updated: April 1, 2020

Attempting to put the Equine Flu behind it, and address the ongoing issues the sport has to face up to, the racing world descends on Gloucester once again to stage the National Hunt meeting at which legends are made and wagers at Bet365, one of the best online betting sites in the UK, are won. It’s a cavalcade of jumpers, bumpers and the Gold Cup itself, so here’s our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites to look out for…shame none of them are horses...

Attempting to put the Equine Flu behind it, and address the ongoing issues the sport has to face up to, the racing world descends on Gloucester once again to stage the National Hunt meeting at which legends are made and wagers at Bet365, one of the best online betting sites in the UK, are won. It’s a cavalcade of jumpers, bumpers and the Gold Cup itself, so here’s our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites to look out for…shame none of them are horses...

Cheltenham Festival

March 12th – 15th

National Hunt Racing

28 Events

1. Incomprehensible Jockeys

A mainstay of all live televised racing is the inevitable post-race interview with someone still on a horse and easily makes our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites. This is because there’s nothing quite as amusing as watching a man with a microphone jog alongside a horse gasping out silly questions to an equally breathless diminutive chap in silks who, regardless of nationality, always appears to be incomprehensibly speaking a language from Middle Earth.

2. Ladies In Silly Hats

The anachronistic “Ladies Day”, one of our seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites, is back so you can expect to see quite a few women sporting bonnets and a posh frock. It makes the list because the media present will make quite the song and dance of it, perhaps hoping to support the British milliners or more likely to distract those who like to bet on sports in the UK from some of the more ludicrous pundits that will be wheeled out in front of the cameras during the week.

3. Drunks

It might not coincide with St Patrick’s Day this year, but that won’t stop the crowds imbibing freely throughout the festival and those who have partaken just a little too much easily make our list of the seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites. Not only do they tend to conspicuously fall over the background of vox pop interviews but sometimes actually appear before the international TV audience as an expert opinion before anyone realizes they’re completely and utterly plastered.

4. Drugs

This has, according to plod, become all too common at British racing meetings and this year the local police have drafted in sniffer dogs to crackdown on drug abuse amongst the public. The fact that they only made two arrests for drug offences during the whole festival last year doesn’t seem to matter. However their “robust anti-drugs message” puts daft police finger wagging on our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites to look out for. One might call it a snort of derision.

5. D-List Attention Seekers

Sadly, among those out for a pleasurable few days watching the racing and taking advantage of UK gambling laws to pick the odd winner or two, there will be the usual plethora of supposed minor celebs out to get their picture in the paper. These people make our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites because their desperation usually leads to disaster of one form or another, typically culminating in minor acts of public indecency for the on hand paparazzi.

6. Violence

Haydock, Goodwood, and Ascot have all seen incidences of crowd violence in recent years and the security presence at the racecourse will be large, manifest and making itself very, very evident. This means the only people fighting will be those far too drunk to actually be of much danger to anyone but themselves, thus this flailing posturing drunken idiocy gets on our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites to look out for as it will be more daft than dangerous.

7. Fatalities

Perhaps rather unfairly on our list of seven 2019 Cheltenham Festival favorites, this gets a mention because in one’s headlong dive into the odds, statistics, and conditions data necessary to perfect your wagers at Bet365, one of the best online sportsbook sites in the UK, it is quite easy to overlook the fact that seven horses died last year. Racing has a whole has to come to terms with the necessary safety improvements, and bettors must remember, horses fall at Cheltenham.