The seven best Cheltenham tips for Wednesday’s festival card
The i Paper’s champion tipster analyses every race on the second day of the Cheltenham Festival to try and point you in the right direction
What is the ultimate test for a chaser? The Grand National? The Cheltenham Gold Cup?
Or is it the Queen Mother Champion Chase, with the emphasis on speed rather than stamina? Mistakes can be overcome at Aintree and even in Cheltenham’s Blue Riband event.
One significant error in Wednesday afternoon’s two-miler, featuring the quickest and slickest jumpers in the game, and there’s no time to recover. It’s all over.
Even Jonbon, Wednesday’s hot favourite, cannot afford to take a liberty. Nicky Henderson’s pride and joy has been beaten only three times in 20 career starts – a phenomenal record – but his losses (from five visits) have all come at Cheltenham.
One was a shocker, a 1-4 defeat at the start of last year, due entirely to him making a Horlicks of jumping one fence. In fairness, the other two blemishes on his otherwise perfect CV were beatings by the remarkable Constitution Hill over hurdles and by a peak-form El Fabiolo in the 2023 Arkle Trophy.
Jonbon, currently on a roll of five successive wins, including four Grade Ones, is at his peak now. He’s popular with the public and they’ll be keeping fingers crossed that he sails over every one of the 13 fences without mishap before roaring him home for a first Festival triumph.
Dangers? Certainly, this will be no walk in the park. Energumene won this in 2022 and 2023 and though now 11 and slammed by Jonbon at Ascot (a track where he has never shone) in January, should not be written off.
Solness and Marine Nationale, first and second in the Dublin Chase at Leopardstown last month, are two new Irish faces in this company and we do not really know yet how good they are going to be.
Cheltenham 2025 tips, day two
- 1.20pm Final Demand 6-4
- 2pm Dancing City (Next Best) 11-2
- 2.40pm Beat The Bat (Best Bet) 12-1
- 3.20pm Roi Mage (Each-Way) 25-1
- 4pm Jonbon 10-11
- 4.40pm Dancing On My Own 18-1
- 5.20pm Copacabana 11-4
Odds correct on 11 March via Oddschecker
We start with one of the most anticipated showdowns of the whole week: Willie Mullins’ Final Demand v Dan Skelton’s The New Lion in the Turners Novices’ Hurdle.
Both are unbeaten and regarded as the best in their division in Ireland and the UK. Final Demand’s form is stronger on paper, but The New Lion has been winning with a ton up his sleeve. The bookies cannot split them and a tip for the former can only be a gut feeling.
Paul Townend usually picks the right one when he has the choice of rides, but not every time and I wonder whether he is on the wrong Mullins one in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase.
Ballyburn, though an outstanding prospect, is untested over three miles, whereas Dancing City (ridden by Willie’s nephew Danny) has really come into his own since stepped up to the distance.
