Cheltenham Festival Blogs

There’s only two weeks to go until the highlight of the betting calendar, the Cheltenham Festival 2008, and the excitement amongst horse racing fans is starting to gather momentum in some style now. This is the time of year when I literally eat, sleep and breathe horse racing. I spend hours every day scanning websites, looking at stats, studying trends, monitoring my market position on the early trades I’ve made and generally acting like Santa is about to arrive.

With this in mind, here are a few of the coolest, most informative, Cheltenham Festival Blogs I’ve been visiting and will continue to visit in the run-up to the big event:

1. Cheltenham Festival Betting

This is an excellent, well-written, blog from the guys at CheltenhamFestival.net. Every couple of days it’s updated with interesting news and articles about the feature races, the horses that are running in them and a lot of other little gems that should provide you with betting clues.

2. Cheltenham Festival Trends

I mentioned Matt Bisogno’s blog just recently on here and as we get closer to the event he’s been updating it near daily with interesting facts about the key races. This is a must-read blog all year round, but I think you’ll find his Cheltenham Festival views particularly interesting.

3. Cheltenham Festival Guide

It should go without saying that Betfair would come up trumps with their Cheltenham Festival Blog and it’s safe to say that they haven’t let us down. Just yesterday they posted a series of audio interviews with Paul Nicholls and this alone is good enough reason to visit.

4. Cheltenham Festival Podcasts

This isn’t a blog as such, but the guys at Cheltenham.co.uk have been posting regular audio updates including interviews with the leading trainers and jockeys, which are worth listening to. While you’re there have a browse around, because there’s a lot of good info to be found.

5. Cheltenham Festival Blog

This blog was started in July 2007 – a lean time of year for Cheltenham Festival interest I would have thought – but throughout the jumps season they’ve kept us up to date about the key races and now that the countdown is on, they’re upping their game with fresh posts every 2-3 days.

6. Cheltenham Festival Minisite

The ATR site is absolute essential reading for the Cheltenham Festival, because it contains stable tours, indepth interviews, daily podcasts and a brilliant stats guide that covers every single race at the meeting. Make a daily visit to ATR for the next two weeks as it’s updated regularly.

7. Cheltenham 2008

The Sporting Life’s contribution to the Cheltenham Festival blogosphere is a worthy opponent to the ATR site, but if I had to choose between the two it would still be the latter. That said, they have some unique features on here and some excellent collumnists, so it’s worth reading.

8. Cheltenham Festival News Alerts

Not exactly a blog, but if you want to keep up to date on all of the very latest news as it’s happening, then visit this site, click on the “news alerts” link on the left menu and set up a news alert for “Cheltenham Festival”. You’ll receive an instant, or daily, email with all the latest stories.

9. Irish Cheltenham Festival News

This is one of the leading horse racing publications from Ireland and it’s an essential stop if you want to find out all the latest news on the Irish runners and riders. Stop by closer to the time to learn if there’s good reason for the movers and drifters among the Irish contingent.

10. More Cheltenham Festival Blogs

Many of you probably don’t know this, but Setanta Sports have their own blog section on their website with dozens of blogs from key people in a multitude of sports. The horse racing section has blogs from Michelle Ward, Johnny Ward and Nick Luck of Racing UK fame.

Some of these blogs are better than others and some I’d consider downright essential reading (the ATR minisite especially), but if you’re keen to learn as much as possible about the runners you’ll be backing at the Festival this year, then drop by them all and have a browse around.

I’ll continue to post further Cheltenham updates here too