Cheltenham Festival

How Often Do Favourites Actually Win at Cheltenham?

2 hours ago

| BY Ben Chopping

The Cheltenham Festival is a jump racing event, which means that, generally speaking, the Cheltenham favourites win rate will be lower than in major events on the flat racing calendar.

So, before you bet, it’s good to know exactly how often favourites win at Cheltenham. Below, we explore the Cheltenham favourite statistics that can help to inform your Cheltenham betting.

What is the Cheltenham Favourites Win Rate?

How often favourites win at Cheltenham, or rather, the Cheltenham favourites win rate, varies between each type of race. Below, you’ll see the percentage of Cheltenham favourite winners for each type over the last five seasons:

Cheltenham Hurdle Races: 39% Win Rate
Cheltenham Handicap Hurdle Races: 28% Win Rate
Cheltenham Steeplechase Races: 46% Win Rate
Cheltenham Handicap Steeplechase Races: 29% Win Rate

Evidently, backing favourites in non-handicap races at Cheltenham Racecourse has proven to be more profitable overall than betting on handicap favourites, but not even chase favourites come through half of the time.

Put all of these figures together, and you have a much more general Cheltenham betting favourite stats line of 35.5% success. Of course, the weight of non-handicap chase favourites certainly influences this stat.

This is a pervasive feature of betting on jump racing over flat racing. The fences combined with the weather invariably add more variables to the occasion, allowing for longer online horse racing odds, even for the favourites.

Favourite vs Outsider Cheltenham Stats

To flip these Cheltenham favourite win rate stats and show how often outsiders defy the odds, here’s the versus percentages drawn from those above:

Hurdle: Favourite 39% vs 61% Outsider
Handicap Hurdle: 28% vs 72% Outsider
Steeplechase: 46% vs 54% Outsider
Handicap Steeplechase: 29% vs 71%

Of course, it’s not as easy as simply backing the rest of the field instead of the favourite. You’ll need to choose your outsider carefully, with experience over the distance and course being key tellers to a potential upset triumph.

Gold Cup Cheltenham Favourite Statistics

So, on to the biggest race of the festival: just how often do favourites win the Cheltenham Gold Cup? Over the last ten Gold Cup races, five favourites have taken the trophy and the largest slice of the hefty prize pool.

In this last decade of racing, several key indicators for success have emerged that can help you to identify which horse is showing true Cheltenham favourite statistics. These are that:

All ten winners have been between the ages of seven and nine.
Nine have been Grade 1 chase winners previously.
Nine have won over 3 miles or further before.
Only one had run more than four times that season.
Nine had at least placed at the Cheltenham Festival.

Last Year’s Cheltenham Favourite Winners

Across the 28 races of the 2025 festival, there were nine Cheltenham favourite winners. Those that made good on their odds as the top picks were as follows:

Kopek des Bordes 4/6 (Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, Day 1)
Myretown 13/2 (Handicap Steeple Chase, Day 1)
Lossiemouth 4/6 (Mares’ Hurdle, Day 1)
Haiti Couleurs 7/2 (National Hunt Novices’ Chase, Day 1)
Stumptown 7/2 (Cross Country Steeple Chase, Day 2)
Fact to File 6/4 (Ryanair Chase, Day 3)
Jadwar 3/1 (Plate Handicap Chase, Day 3)
Kargese 3/1 (County Handicap Hurdle, Day 4)
Dinoblue 6/4 (Mares’ Steeple Chase, Day 4)

Around those nine favourites who went on to win their races, nine more placed in second or third. So, when assessing your picks for the horse racing bet builder, it’s good to note that only 32.1% of favourites won last year.

Comparing that figure to the overall statistics of the hurdle and chase non-handicap and handicap Cheltenham favourites win rate, the 32.1% is lower than the average over the last five seasons of 35.5%.