Bringing in the New Year, as is always the tradition, we have the Cheltenham New Year’s Day meeting on Wednesday to look forward to.
A seven race card to enjoy, and four of those seven races are covered live on ITV as the main meeting on their New Year broadcast.
The meeting includes the Grade Two Relkeel Hurdle, while there’s also a very good premier handicap over two miles and four furlongs featuring plenty of old favourites.
Cheltenham January 1st Preview
The second race on the card at 12:55 pm is an interesting-looking novice chase, with two runners catching the eye as they met last time out.
Vincenzo got the better of Tedley at Windsor by just under two lengths, but the second gets a 3lb pull at the weights here. That should bring them even closer together, giving us a great matchup to enjoy.
The Paul Nicholls-trained Kalif Du Berlais has also beaten Tedley this season. Now that he’s up to 141, he’ll have to be above average to get a handicap win off this mark in a race of this nature.
At 1:30 pm, we have a long-distance handicap over 3m1f where Broadway Boy catches the eye. Third at this course on seasonal reappearance, then second at Newbury in the race known as the Hennessy Gold Cup. This is a step down after that, and he’s only up 2lb in the weights.
We move onto the first of two feature races at 2:05 pm, a premier handicap over 2m4f, which looks incredibly competitive.
Gemirande leads the early betting market, coming here for a hat trick after winning at Ascot on reappearance and then winning the December Gold Cup here by one length. 8lb higher in the weights makes life much tougher, but this horse looks highly progressive right now.
Elsewhere, Hitman hasn’t been far off the top of the game in years gone by. Now a nine-year-old, he was second in the Old Roan at Aintree on reappearance and has dropped 1lb in weight since.
Novice Springwell Bay would be of interest if running, with just three chase starts to his name, he’s won a Listed contest and finished behind two very exciting prospects on his other two outings.
The second feature, the Relkeel Hurdle, comes up at 3:15 pm, and much of the betting market will be determined by Willie Mullins and if he sends Gala Marceau across for the race.
A dual Grade One winner, she was second behind Lossiemouth at Punchestown on her only start this season and would be a big player if she comes over.
Elsewhere, Golden Ace won the Mares’ Novice Hurdle at the 2024 Cheltenham Festival and won here again a month later. She came back with a 4th at Ascot in the Grade Two Ascot Hurdle, but that was better than the position suggests, she was only two lengths behind the winner that day.
Lucky Place was the winner of that race, a horse with good Cheltenham course form (second in a Grade Two novice and fourth in the Coral Cup, both in 2024), he sets a strong standard.
Langer Dan could also run and is the best of these on official ratings, but he usually comes to life in the spring and was a distant third when seen at Newbury on his only start so far this season.
There’s a listed bumper to close the card at 3:50 pm, which looks like an absolute minefield for punters. However, a mention for Gnomon from the Ralph Beckett yard.
They don’t have many jumps runners, but I remember this one making his debut at Exeter and despite being very green and needing the experience, he came away from the field to win nicely.
While there are plenty of others in the race you can say the same about, he struck me as one that was going to be above average.