In horse racing, there is arguably no trickier art than placing a long-term ante-post bet. If your long-term bet pays off, you look like a genius. If it doesn’t, you’ll probably feel a bit foolish. The carrot, so to speak, is that you can avail of (potentially) better odds in the long term. The downside is that your selection might not even run in the designated race, and you might not even get your money back, an issue that we will deal with a bit later.
As most are aware, an ante-post bet is a selection on a race in the future. An example might be betting on next spring’s Cheltenham Gold Cup now in the summer. The art of the bet comes in seeing value in the market as it stands today, and believing that the horse racing betting odds will shorten considerably by the time the race comes around.
Galopin des Champs was backed all the way
If we use the Cheltenham Gold Cup as an example, we can talk about Galopin Des Champs. He was, indeed, favourite for the Cheltenham showpiece all throughout the summer of 2022. Back then, you could have got around 6/1 for the Willie Mullins-trained runner. His performances in the early jumps season, however, convinced more people to lump on throughout the winter. Finally, on Gold Cup Day 2023, Galopin romped home as the hot favourite at an SP of 7/5. Incidentally, Galopin de Champs is again the ante-post market leader of the 2024 Gold Cup.
While in hindsight, we might look back at anyone backing Galopin Des Champs last summer as having pulled off a masterstroke. He had suffered a spectacular fall at Cheltenham 2022, but his prowess was plain to see. You could tell by the murmurings of jockey Paul Townend and Mullins that the Closutton operation had unearthed another gem. Yet, everything had to go perfectly for Galopin des Champs in the 2022/23 jumps season, and it was fortunate that it did.
But more often than not, choosing the favourite months before a race can end up a losing strategy. Galopin des Champs is something of an outlier. Some races, including the Melbourne Cup, are notoriously difficult to predict the favourite, never mind the actual winner of the race. And as mentioned, there is always the risk of losing your stake if money back is not offered for a non-runner.
Punters need to be sure that their runner will participate
The NRNB (non-runner no bet) tactic is interesting for ante-post betting. If we are to use Cheltenham again for our example, then you’ll see that most bookies don’t offer NRNB until about two weeks before the action Festival begins. Even at that, they usually start with the four championship races – the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, Stayers’ Hurdle and Gold Cup – then add the other 24 races closer to the start date. It means that bets placed in the summer will be lost if your selection doesn’t run. With jumps racing, that can be all the more precarious as we don’t know whether a trainer will opt to send a certain horse over fences and hurdles. Thus, your smart ante-post bet might be backing a horse that is running a different discipline altogether.
But when it works well, it can be one of the most satisfying strategies. We mentioned Galopin des Champs earlier. And while that was a savvy bet for those who took the chance last year, there are other starker examples. Consider the highly underrated Put the Kettle On. In January 2021, smart punters saw the Arkle winner – one who had always looked at home at Cheltenham – and smashed into the mare at price of up to 40/1. By the time Cheltenham 2021 rolled around, the mare’s odds had dropped to 17/2 for a relatively weak renewal of the Queen Mother Champion Chase. And the same year, punters could back Minella Times at fancy prices for the Grand National before the “Rachael (Blackmore) effect” took over.
Nonetheless, ante-post betting is a difficult field to navigate. You need to be sure that the odds you see will look like value in the future. And you need to weigh up the risk versus reward benefits of your horse getting injured, losing form, or not appearing in the race at all. But if you make those calculations and feel it is worth backing, then you can look like the smartest punter in the business.
