The 2020 Cheltenham Festival has reached the halfway stage, and our expert Cheltenham tips for the third day of the Festival are now live on site.
Yesterdays Tote Placepot paid £352 to a £1 stake, and Day Three of last year’s Festival saw the dividend come out at a healthy £2,439.20 to a £1 stake.
Looking closer at Thursday’s card, Joe Eccles has produced his advised Cheltenham Festival Day Three Placepot below – with a brief summary of his reasoning for each selection.
1.30 – (3) Itchy Feet
(4) Melon
2.10 – (16) Relegate
(4) Jatiluwih
2.50 – (7) Saint Calvados
3.30 – (8) Paisley Park
4.10 – (21) Blazer
4.50 – (16) Timetochill
(21) Anna Bunina
8 Lines
Itchy Feet ran out an impressive winner of the Scilly Isles earlier this year and looks a serious player on the back of that.
At a bigger price, perennial Festival bridesmaid Melon looks a likely improver now stepped up in trip and cannot be ruled out for place purposes.
2018 Champion Bumper heroine Relegate made a promising handicap/stable/season debut at Punchestown last month, and she looks very interesting off what looks a potentially lenient mark.
Philip Hobbs’s Jatiluwih won his first five starts for these connections and lost little in defeat at Wincanton last time out, he rates as the main danger.
This year’s race has a wide-open feel to it, and it would be no shock to see Harry Whittington’s Saint Calvados take advantage.
He has been campaigned with this race solely in mind and remains unexposed over this trip.
No obvious opposition to Paisley Park, who took this last year and has remained unbeaten since.
Emma Lavelle’s charge comes alive at Prestbury Park, so another Stayers’ Hurdle success looks firmly in the offing.
Simply The Betts will understandably be a warm order here having seen the form of his recent course win boosted by the second – Imperial Aura – earlier in the week.
It may be worth taking him on, however, with the Willie Mullins-trained Blazer a solid alternative.
This gelding ran a fine race at the Dublin Racing Festival latest and arrives here running off just a three-pound higher mark.
The first three in this race last year were priced up at odds of 50/1, 66/1, and 40/1, so it may be worth looking slightly left field.
The first of the two selections, Timetochill, looks overpriced on her latest run at Doncaster, where she was not far behind the much stronger fancied Floressa.
Anna Bunina was smart on the flat and can be excused her latest run at Fairyhouse, where she was struck into – it would be no shock to see her outrun her healthy odds.