...and they can be some of the toughest races to nail for punters...
We are turning into the straight now...
with only the final climb up the hill to the winning post to come... and then it's here...
💥 BOOM! The 2024 Cheltenham Festival!
As mentioned in last week's emails the doors to my 2024 Cheltenham service will be closing this weekend... so this is the last chance saloon for those of you that are looking to hook up to NTF over the next week to 10-days...
>>>See how NTF can help you at Cheltenham 2024
And here are some tasty Cheltenham Festival Handicap Hurdle Stats for you to tuck into...
CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL: HANDICAP HURDLES
The four (Non-Novice) Handicap Hurdles run at each
Festival are...
Coral Cup (Wednesday)
Pertemps Final (Thursday)
County Hurdle (Friday)
Martin Pipe
(Friday)
Over the last 5 years they've produced...
20 winners
80 Win & Place Horses
From 476 runners
The Stats...
20 of 20 winners had no more than 22 career starts
(0/81, 7p those with 23+ career starts)
20/20 10 or less Handicap Hurdle starts
(0/50, 1p those with 11+ Handicap Hurdle starts)
20/20 Days Since Last Run 18-98
(0/65, 7p out with that range)
20/20 ran over Hurdles Last Time Out
(0/47, 4p for those that didn't)
20/20 0-3 previous Handicap Hurdle wins
20/20 aged 9 or younger
Those 6 stats would have found you all 20 winners of the (Non-Novice) Handicap Hurdles at the last 5 Cheltenham Festivals... as well as 63 of the 80 Win & Place horses...
It would have knocked out 180 losers...
As always, there are many ways you can slice and dice the festival races when using trends and stats as your starting point...
For example I like to dig into the stats associated with individual races when pulling together the analysis for my full NTF Members...
...but the more rounded view of the handicaps highlighted in this email is also something I like to consider... and although it is probably a bit more rough and ready than the individual race approach, it is still a potent and profitable method to attack some of the trickiest races
you'll find on the entire racing calendar.
If you had backed all of the qualifiers that the stats above pointed you towards you would have been in profit to the tune of +£164.45 (Betfair SP)... the only year in
the last 5 that didn't return a profit was 2020... where it returned -0.04... which is essentially a break even year...
It's not an approach that I personally took... but the returns give plenty of confidence that the stats are ones that are well worth
factoring in to your overall approach to the Handicap Hurdles...
And I'll certainly be using them to help my own Handicap Hurdle analysis at Cheltenham next week...