Willie Mullins had a record breaking number of winners at the Irish Racing Festival last week and with many superb performances by his top horses, he has plenty of short priced favourites for the Cheltenham Festival next month.
One of the horses in question is Monkish who is 5/6 (1.83) -1.83 favourite in odds to win the Brown Advisory Novices Chase at Cheltenham Festival. Monkfish is a 7 year old horse trained by Willie Mullins and after an excellent hurdling career, has taken to chasing extremely well and won all three races so far this season.
Monkfish has excellent Cheltenham form having won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle in 2020 at Cheltenham Festival and after a strong performance earlier this month at Leopardstown, will go off strong odds off favourite to win another Festival race.
The opening race of the festival has another Willie Mullins horse as favourite as Appreciate It has odds of 7/4 (2.75) +175 to land the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Second in the Champion Bumper last year Appreciate It has followed this up with three wins in a row in Ireland winning a Grade 1 hurdle at Leopardstown earlier this month and then another Grade 1 race at the same track back in December.
The outstanding form of Willie Mullins’ horses is such that quite a few of them are improving with every run and winning Group 1 races leaving the odds to shorten every time they run as with a top trainer and a proven winner, the bookies could be in for a shock when the favourites all pass the winning line first.
The star attraction on day two of the Cheltenham Festival is the Champion Chase which Willie Mullins has won before and has another hugely talented horse called Chacun Pour Soi who is strong favourite to win this race at odds of 10/11 (1.91) – 191. This horse has outstanding form and won six out of eight chase races including 4 wins in a row at Leopardstown.
Chacun Pour Soi is a 9 year old chaser who won the Ladbrokes Dublin Chase earlier in February and before that the Paddy Power Chase in December 2020. The horse won this race comfortably by 6 lengths and seems to absolutely love jumping fences and is also comfortable at Leopardstown.
The one note for punters backing this odds on horse is that it’s not run at Cheltenham over the big fences and a huge hill to climb as the race comes to a conclusion and this is likely to be one race to oppose an odds on favourite as it is important to have course form, especially for a 9 year old horse.
Moving onto the Cheltenham Festival Bumper and this is a specialist race that Willie Mullins runs quite a few horses and more often than not will come out on top with a horse which goes on to be a big star.
This year Willie Mullins has Kilcruit as the favourite for the Cheltenham Bumper and with two wins from three runs and a big win at the preparation race in Ireland at Leopardstown earlier this month, Kilcruit is one to follow. The 6 year old will go off 13/8 (2.63) +163 favourite to land another Champion Bumper for Willie Mullins and by the way the horse won the latest race in Ireland, this could be a favourite worth backing.
Finally in the big race of the festival, Willie Mullins will look to win the race again with Al Boum Photo. The back to back winner of the race will once again go off favourite and it will take a lot of stopping. The current odds are 3/1 (4.0) +300 for Album Photo to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup again and the potential challengers are few and far between.
One horse who could outrun their odds is Kemboy, another Willie Mullins trained horse who at 12/1 (13.0) + 1200 won the big chase at Leopardstown earlier this month and with a repeat performance at Cheltenham where the horse has performed well in the past, could give Mullins a one-two in the race, given both horses are ones to follow.
It promises to be a fabulous Cheltenham Festival next week and check out sportsbookreviews.com for all the latest odds.
