UK Fans Prepare for Cheltenham Festival

Posted on Monday, March 13th, 2006

UK Racing fans are gearing up for one of the year’s biggest events as the Cheltenham Festival, which starts on Tuesday.

More than 230,000 tickets have been sold for the four-day fixture, which stages the Champion Hurdle on day one. The Festival is missing several equine stars following the death of triple Gold Cup winner Best Mate and injuries to other leading horses.

But punters will still be able to savour 24 top-quality races, including the Gold Cup on Friday.It is the feature race of the meeting, which traditionally attracts thousands of Irish racegoers, and takes place on St. Patrick’s Day this year.

Ireland’s favourite for the blue riband event, in the absence of injured 2005 champion Kicking King, is Beef or Salmon.

There’s plenty of confidence behind the horse, trained by Michael Hourigan, despite the fact he has yet to win outside his homeland and has failed to make the placings three times in the big race.

Grand National winner Hedgehunter is among the other Irish contenders, along with War of Attrition and Forget The Past. Monkerhostin, trained by Philip Hobbs in Somerset, leads the English challenge alongside Kingscliff and Celestial Gold.

All the leading hopefuls have question marks against their form, making the blue riband an open affair with some observers expecting a shock result. (BBC)

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"UK Fans Prepare for Cheltenham Festival" was posted on Monday, March 13th, 2006 at 9:51 am and is filed under Horses, Stakes Races, Trainers, UK-Great Britain Horse Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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