Cheltenham Festival day 1 guide: Today’s tips, races, weather and results

Plus, full race schedule and best bets for the opening day of the meeting, including the Champion Hurdle

The Tuesday of the Cheltenham Festival is the most anticipated day in the jump-racing calendar, as months of preparation and conjecture finally come to a head.
The big race of the day, the Champion Hurdle, has lost a key participant in Constitution Hill, last year’s winner, but there are still plenty of stars ready to light up the opening day of the meeting. 
The meeting begins today, Tuesday, March 12. The first of seven races is off at 1.30pm. Scroll down for a full schedule. 
The first five races of each day of the meeting will be broadcast live free-to-air on ITV1 and on streaming via ITVX. For coverage of the entire card, including the final two races of each day, Racing TV is the place to go. 
1.30: Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1)Marlborough’s tip: Mystical Power
2.10: Arkle Challenge Trophy Novices’ Chase (Grade 1) Marlborough’s tip: Il Etait Temps
2.50: Ultima Handicap Chase (Premier Handicap)Marlborough’s tip: Stumptown
3.30: Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy (Grade 1) Marlborough’s tip: State Man
4.10: Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle (Grade 1) Marlborough’s tip: Lossiemouth
4.50: Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle (Premier Handicap) Marlborough’s tip: Batman Girac
5.30: National Hunt Challenge Cup Amateur Jockeys’ Novices’ Chase (Grade 2) Marlborough’s tip: Corbetts Cross
Mr Vango (National Hunt Chase, 5.30): Won the Devon National by 60 lengths on his last start, definitely stays the trip. Any chinks in the stamina of the good Irish horses, he’ll find them out. His trainer died last week – it’s written in the stars.
Mr Vango (National Hunt Chase, 5.30): Mr Vango is the best value today. The eight year old gelding was the last winner officially trained by Gold Cup winning trainer Mark Bradstock before he passed away last week. He absolutely romped home on heavy ground at Exeter a couple of weeks ago, so any rain and divine help would be a positive. Mr Vango is a classic Bradstock horse. Not over raced, and punching well above his weight.
Slade Steel (Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, 1.30): The opening two races of the meeting are wide open and are enticing punting propsitions with big names at the head of both markets not running. Gaelic Warrior is temping in the Arkle but Slade Steel looks a tasty price for the opening race of the meeting – the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. 
He has only been beaten twice under rules, on both occasions by Ballyburn – the red-hot favourite for the Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle on Wednesday. He was seven lengths behind Ballyburn at Leopardstown last month and that may well be good enough form to win this race, with others all having questions to answer. 
At around 7/1, he’s an excellent each-way bet to start the meeting.
There is the possibility of a few showers on the opening day of the meeting but these should be light and sporadic. The temperature will get up to a maximum of 12C.
The going on the Old Course (which is the circuit used on day one) is rated as soft.
By Marcus Armytage
Few sports do fate or fairytale quite like horse racing and on top of all those things which can be analysed like a horse’s form, its rating and its penchant for certain conditions and courses, there is something which cannot be evaluated in the same way; divine intervention – if that, indeed, is what it is – is regularly an unstoppable force in the outcome of races.
Though the all-conquering Willie Mullins will be keen to win Tuesday’s National Hunt Chase which is run in the memory of the family matriarch, Maureen Mullins, who died in February, there would be no more poignant winner on the first day of this year’s Festival than Mr Vango were he to triumph a day before the private funeral of his trainer Mark Bradstock. Is it written in the stars?
Along with his wife Sara, an integral half of the partnership, Bradstock, 66, never had more than a dozen horses in the yard but never lacked a good one whether it was his first Festival winner, King Harald, the Hennessy winner Carruthers, his brother the 2015 Gold Cup winner Coneygree, the Bet365 Gold Cup winner Step Back and, perhaps now, Mr Vango.
He is everything you would expect of a patiently brought along Bradstock horse. He was ‘pinched’ from under the noses of far bigger trainers for £30,000 after winning a British maiden point-to-point by 25 lengths two years ago and, on his last start, he provided the ailing trainer with his last winner and a tonic no oncologist could match; coming home 60 lengths clear in the Devon National at Exeter.
You can either take the view, like the bookmakers, that the Exeter race fell apart or you can take the contrasting view that with his relentless front-running it was he who took the long distance chase apart.
The Mullins pair Corbetts Cross and Embassy Gardens, first and second in the betting, are both fitted with first time hoods, an increasing trend for Closutton runners, suggesting they may both need to switch off to get the three-and-three-quarter miles on Tuesday. And with Mr Vango making it a test of stamina they will need to stay every yard.
The most recent example of an other-worldly result came when Highland Hunter, the favourite horse of ill-fated point-to-point rider Keagan Kirkby, won at Newbury just a few days before leading the rider’s west country funeral procession. He goes in the Ultima Handicap Chase but with a 5lb penalty for that win, he will need serious amounts of help from above and a spot of over-time from Kirkby.
If, however, it is absent friends we are talking about then we need to mention Constitution Hill, already adorning the poster advertising next year’s Festival just after the winning post, who is excused from defending his Unibet Champion Hurdle title with a sick note.
Will the action be all the poorer without the best jumper on the planet? Of course, to an extent, but I doubt any tickets for Tuesday were sent back for refund because of it and when the winner’s name goes up on the honours board – probably last year’s runner-up State Man – history might record the horses he beat but it will not list the horses which did not turn up.
The timing of what we would call a chest infection is unlucky but his trainer Nicky Henderson is the man with an outstanding record in the Champion Hurdle and with after-thought entry, Iberico Lord, may yet win it a 10th time.
Like Constitution Hill and, on Monday, Cleeve Hill, the back-drop to the next four days entertainment, his horses have been under a cloud but for the moment at least, we have to take it on trust that they would not be here if the trainer and his vets did not think they were in good form.
This race could suit the rapidly improving six-year-old who makes the step up from handicaps to championship. He would not be the first horse to win the Betfair Hurdle on the way to winning the Champion Hurdle.
The main talking point this week is going to be the domination of the Irish or, more specifically, one Irishman, Willie Mullins. He saddles pretty much half the favourites.
If you are looking for omens ahead then I suggest you take Cillian Murphy’s Oscar ahead of Ireland’s last-minute capitulation to England at Twickenham on Saturday. Britain will not go winnerless but it is hard to see the home team lifting the Prestbury Cup this year or, indeed, any time soon in the cycle of these things.
Mullins is odds-on with two bookmakers to have 10 (his record in 2022) or more winners, he is 16-1 to have five or less. Six is pretty much par for him and, currently on 94, six this year would make him the first man to have had a century of winners at the Festival. We will give you that Willie but, this year, don’t go and win your mother’s race.
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