GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY THIS week – but do enjoy a winner too.

Bookmakers are keen to attract bets this week and, as such, there are some really good-value offers to enhance your fun during Cheltenham, the first experience of which changed my life 19 years ago.

It was akin to the loss of virginity only much better. I was a pup in college with few lectures and little enthusiasm but I met folks in the betting shop – some of them no longer with us, others among my best friends today.

The craic during Cheltenham is not comparable to any other experience – and a few winners may help as Honeysuckle, the monster of the fairer equine sex, bids to cement immortality in the feature Champion Hurdle (3.30).

Her performance in this last year was pretty extraordinary. It was hard to know how she represented value at a shade of odds-against on form, yet somebody knew something, and she was utterly full of herself.

This year she has two new rivals in Teahupoo and Appreciate It, who has to be backed at a top-quote 9-2 each-way with William Hill. You are getting an each-way price in a race in which only three count for win purposes about a horse whose last run was a 24-length win in the Supreme at odds-on for Willie Mullins.

There are lots of positives to counter the negative of his hiatus since.

Racing will plead with the gods that Honeysuckle wins and you lack empathy if you don’t feel for her if and when it is apparent she will not retire as an unbeaten racehorse. But, as Del Boy might say, “business is business” – and my business this week, and I assume yours, is mainly about making money.

If Appreciate It were to walk in the market, it would obviously be alarming, but he’s trained by Willie, and this has been the aim for months. His time in his Supreme demolition was only marginally slower than Honeysuckle’s on slightly drier terrain in the 2021 Champion Hurdle. A case can be made – and has been.

Paul Townend will be taking dead aim at Rachael Blackmore coming to the last if all goes to plan. In some respects, it’s an underwhelming renewal, yet at once laden with intrigue.

Two years after my first experience of Cheltenham, they ran the Fred Winter for the first time and I’d a fiver each-way on Dabiroun, who duly won under Nina Carberry at a big price. Cheltenham winners are much easier remembered and Dabiroun’s trainer, Paul Nolan, might strike in this year’s renewal (4.50) with HMS Seahorse.

This horse has pace, stamina and a fine attitude, as befits a son of Galileo. Hills pays five places and he should give his all, even if one can only speculate as to how good Gaelic Warrior might be for Team Mullins.

I’ll tip three selections here each day over the four days and, hopefully, all 12 of them win. They won’t but Floueur very well might in the Ultima (2.50) for Gordon Elliott, who may feel entitled to celebrate in the circumstances: he was banned from all of this 12 months ago.

So were racegoers; how thrilling they are back in the Cotswolds.

Ireland internationals Devin Toner and Lindsay Peat were our guests for The Front Row’s special live event, in partnership with Guinness, this week. The panel chats through Ireland’s championship chances ahead of the final round of Guinness Six Nations matches, and members of the Emerald Warriors – Ireland’s first LGBT+ inclusive rugby team – also join us to talk about breaking down barriers in rugby. Click here to subscribe or listen below:

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