Supreme Novices Hurdle Betting Preview – Cheltenham Day 1 Tips (2025)

The Supreme Novices Hurdle is the opening race on Day 1 of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival and 12 runners have been declared for one of the biggest horse racing betting heats of the season.

We’ve known the early entries for the Supreme Novices Hurdle for some time now but decisions have been made and all eyes will be on Prestbury Park on Tuesday afternoon.

Here, we look at some of the leading players in the Cheltenham odds for this year’s race, with a Supreme Novices Hurdle selection ahead of the 2025 renewal.

The opening roar of the Festival will take on more poignancy this year as the Supreme takes on the sympathetically renamed mantle of the “Michael O’Sullivan Supreme Novices’ Hurdle”.

A swath of cash is sure to come for William Munny, who will bid to provide Barry Connell with a second victory in Supreme.

Owner-trainer Connell landed the traditional Festival curtain-raiser with Marine Nationale two years ago, a horse ridden by the late Michael O’Sullivan, so the will to win will be very strong amongst that team.

Willie Mullins has hailed KOPEK DES BORDES as his “banker” bet of the festival, and most punters tend to agree as he hovers around the 4/5 mark in our betting.

The five-year-old has arrived at a touch of odds-on, on the back of an impressive victory at the Dublin Racing Festival, with this race not looking particularly deep in comparison.

Kopek Des Bordes produced a slightly novicey round of jumping on the way to victory on his debut over hurdles at Leopardstown, but those kinks were soon ironed out as he ran away with the Grade 1 Novice Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival.

In addition to saddling the favourite, William Mullins runs another strong candidate in the shape of Salvator Mundi.

The five-year-old cantered home by a wide margin at Tipperary but was labelled an “iffy” jumper after his success in the Grade 2 Moscow Flyer at Punchestown, where he was far from fluent early on before finishing off strongly.

The Joe Donnelly-owned gelding clearly has a big engine and that could well come into play up the Cheltenham hill on Tuesday.

Punters are actually of the view that there is only one real challenger to the hot-pot favourite, and that is from the Gordon Elliott-trained Romeo Coolio.

The six-year-old handles the big occasion very well and he ran a stormer in the Champion Bumper last year, finishing second to Jasmin De Vaux. It was a real test of stamina that day but he didn’t quite last home, which you can put down to a lack of experience.

Fast forward twelve months and he’s now full of the requisite experience. Gordon Elliott’s youngster sluiced up in the Grade 1 Future Champions Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown and comes into the Supreme as a major each-way player at the very least.

Those looking for a horse to outrun its odds in the Supreme may want to consider Workahead.

Speaking a few day ago, De Bromhead said: “Workahead seems really good, he worked well the other day, delighted with him. His form has worked out really well obviously”.

The seven-year-old had the beating of William Munny at Leopardstown, so why not again?

SELECTION: KOPEK DES BORDES