The Cheltenham Open Meeting 2008

The three day Cheltenham Open Meeting gets underway on Friday 14th with the main race of the meeting being the Paddy Power Gold Cup Chase worth £150,000 run over 2 miles 4 furlongs on Saturday. I listed past winners of this race in my blog of twelve months ago so will not go over that ground again. There have been some good horses win this race and Saturday’s renewal looks very competitive and hard to solve. The two horses that most appeal to me are Maljimar and Stan. Both are course and distance winners. Maljimar was particularly impressive when winning by 11 lenghs from Burntoakboy back in January on Festival Trials Day. Perhaps we might see a repeat of the happy connections pictured coming into the winners enclosure again. Stan won the Mears Group Silver Trophy Handicap over 2 mile 5 furlongs on the course back in April when he beat Il Duce who was runnerup in this race last year. Stan has already had a run this season whereas it will Majimar’s first run for 259 days.

There is a big field for the Servo Computer Services Trophy Handicap Chase worth £60,000 run over 3 miles and 3 furlongs on Saturday. Although he has top weight Halcon Genelardais looks the one to be on for this race. Alan King the trainer has said that the horse is well so lets hope he can get his head in front at least once this season. For all the runners and riders with the jockey’s colours click on the sporting life. Be lucky.