William Hill Cheltenham Handicap Chase Tip

Cheltenham is back and we focus on their valuable staying handicap chase at 2:20 pm.

It's competitive with 14 runners fighting it out for the £52,030 first prize.

Broadway Boy represents the in-form Nigel Twiston-Davies stable but is too short in the betting. He lost his form following his win here last December and should be taken on. Chasing Fire and Senior Chief would prefer softer going so we back the Dan Skelton trained Le Milos. This horse likes soft but has run well on good ground in the past when winning the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury.

Le Milos ran much better than his finishing position in the Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown on the final day of last season. He was bang in contention over the second last fence only to tire approaching the final fence. That proved he much prefers chasing to hurdling having flopped in the Pertemps final at the Cheltenham Festival. His handicap mark is only a pound higher than when he won the ultra-competitive Coral Gold Cup.

Of the rest, Some Scope is interesting having run so well in defeat behind Does He Know in the Grimthorpe Handicap Chase at Doncaster last season. The ground was testing that day and found him out over the final furlong. Some Scope should enjoy the good ground today and ran well at the Cheltenham April Meeting.

Cheltenham 2:20

1 point each way Le Milos 10/1 Ladbrokes, Unibet, Coral & William Hill, 4 places.

Compare Odds at https://www.oddschecker.com/horse-racing

 

Best of Luck,

Nicky

Past Results

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Cheltenham Racecourse at Prestbury Park, near CheltenhamGloucestershire, England, hosts National Hunt horse racing. Racing at Cheltenham took place in 1815, but comprised only minor flat races on Nottingham Hill. The first racing on Cleeve Hill was on Tuesday 25 August 1818 when the opening race was won by Miss Tidmarsh, owned by Mr E Jones. It was a year later when the results were printed in the Racing Calendar when a programme of flat racing was watched by the Duke of Gloucester who donated 100 Guineas to the prize fund.
By 1831 races were being staged at Prestbury, although not on the present day course. In 1834 the Grand Annual Steeplechase was run for the first time. In 1839 Lottery won the Grand Annual having previously won the first Aintree Grand National. In 1840 the meeting transferred to Andoversford for a brief period, only to return to Prestbury in 1847. 1902 was a notable year in that racing moved to the present course at Prestbury Park. The new stands were completed in 1914 and the present day Festival races, as we know them, began to take shape. The Cheltenham Gold Cup, over 3 ¼ miles, was run for the first time in 1924, with the Champion Hurdle following in 1927.The course's most prestigious meeting is the Cheltenham Festival, held in March, which features several Grade I races including the Cheltenham Gold CupChampion HurdleQueen Mother Champion ChaseRyanair Chase and the Stayers' Hurdle.

The racecourse has a scenic location in a natural amphitheatre, just below the escarpment of the Cotswold Hills at Cleeve Hill, with a capacity of 67,500 spectators. Cheltenham Racecourse railway station no longer connects to the national rail network, but is the southern terminus of the preserved Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.The main racecourse has two separate courses alongside each other, the Old Course and the New Course.

The New Course has a tricky downhill fence and a longer run-in for steeplechases than the Old Course. Hurdle races over two miles on the New Course also have a slight peculiarity in that most of the hurdles are jumped early on in the race with only two hurdles being jumped in the last seven furlongs. The Old Course is the racecourse used for The Showcase, The November Meeting and the first two days of the Cheltenham Festival. There is also a cross-country course which is laid out inside the main racecourse and is used for cross-country steeplechases.

The racecourse is the home of The Centaur, one of the largest auditoria in the South West of England. This multiple-use complex seats over 2,000 people for conferences and around 4,000 standing for concerts. It is also home to the Steeplechasing Hall of Fame. From 1999 to 2013, the racecourse was the venue for the annual Greenbelt festival and remains the venue for the Wychwood Music Festival. The University of Gloucestershire holds its graduation ceremony and summer ball at the racecourse.

In 2001 during the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, the 2001 Cheltenham Festival was cancelled for the first time since 1943 due to World War II.

From 2008, the racecourse and The Jockey Club were in talks with Cheltenham Town F.C. about a possible move to the racecourse. This would have meant the building of a new stadium with a double-sided stand, one side in the stadium and the other for watching the races. In 2011, Cheltenham Town F.C. decided against the move for financial reasons.

In 2015, Cheltenham Racecourse opened the £45m 6,500-capacity Princess Royal Stand, which completed the redevelopment of the course.

 

William Hill Cheltenham Handicap Chase Winners Over The Past 10 years