Cheltenham Festival Market Steamers From The Weekend

The first horse we need to talk about from the weekends action was the bumper superstar of last Envoi Allen who made his hurdles debut at Down Royal on Saturday.

He went off at a short price of 1/3 in the maiden hurdle where there was a lot of apprehension in the air about what this horse was going to be like over obstacles but he got off to a winning start.

He blitzed the field in workman like fashion and to the pleasure of many showed he was just as good over hurdles as he was last season in bumpers.

This sparked big movement in some of the betting markets for the Cheltenham festival especially in the Grade One Ballymore Novices Hurdle where he went into 9/2 favourite from previous odds of 9/2.

One of the biggest seasonal debuts of he weekend was from Lostintranslation who is fancied by many for this seasons King George VI and Gold Cup and he gave off perfect signs for ante-post backers.

He started his season off at Carlisle on Sunday in the Listed Colin Parker Memorial Intermediate Chase and he was simply perfect at every fence seeing off three other runners with ease.

He arguably gave the performance of the weekend but many punters seemed to like it and in the Cheltenham Gold Cup market he went into third favourite at 8/1 from 12/1.

He really gave promising signs for the season ahead and we believe he will be very tough to beat stepping up in trip next time out and throughout the season.

The final horse that saw market support off the back of his performance this weekend was the forgotten horse in Samcro who looked to be back to his best on his chasing debut.

Everything went wrong for the Gigginstown owned gelding last season with injury, illness and just constant underperforming in big races but it now looks like Gordon Elliott has his star back to top form.

He also raced at Down Royal in successful two days for his trainer and on the Friday he never came off the bridle and easily stayed on nicely to take the race.

His jumping was something critics talked about before the race but he was effortless over the bigger obstacles and this saw him go into 8/1 from a previous price of 16/1 for the JLT Novices Chase at the festival.