Beef Or Salmon The Main Course On Day Four

On the final day of the festival (St. Patrick's day), the Gold Cup is the feature event.

This year's race looks like wide-open affair with the Michael Hourigan-trained Beef Or Salmon 4/1 favourite for the race with William Hill. An eight-time Grade 1 winner in Ireland, he'll be bidding to make amends for three previous failures at winning national hunt racing's Blue Riband.

The Irish ten year old is for many an acquired dish, with many experts saying that the horse just doesn't like Cheltenham. Hourigan's response to this: "I don't think you can be confident going into a race like the Gold Cup but it's a load of cobblers when people suggest he doesn't like Cheltenham."

Best of the Brits could be the still improving Monkerhostin (6/1 with William Hill), a horse who has impressed this season, in winning the William Hill Haldon Gold Cup at Exeter in November and in his fast-finishing second to last years gold cup hero Kicking King in the Stan James King George. One thing we can be sure of this year is that we will have a new champion, with the untimely demise of Best Mate and with reigning champion Kicking King on the easy list.

The Gold Cup hasn't been the best race in recent times for the green team, with just three Irish-trained winners in the last 25 runnings (Kicking King last season, Imperial Call in 1996 and Dawn Run 10 years before that). This year on St. Patrick's day, the Irish will have four pronged attack on the Gold Cup, with Beef or Salmon, War of Attrition, Hedgehunter and Forget the Past, and William Hill go 2/1 for Ireland to sail back across the Irish sea, with the treasured Tote Gold Cup.

Elsewhere on day 4, Irish eyes will be on Willie Mullin's Mister Hight in the Triumph hurdle, the unbeaten four year old is 10/3 favourite with William Hill to recoup some of Willie Mullins losses, after all four of his horses finished unplaced in yesterday's bumper.