It is not a secret who the best National Hunt trainers are, and in seed order they are Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, Nicky Henderson, Henry De Bromhead and Paul Nicholls. The named trainers are not just the best but significantly so, and it is this fact we want to expand upon!

The Racing Horse confidently predicts this BIG FIVE will train over half of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival winners. Reality dictates they will be successful in 14 to 18 of the 27 bona fide races, these numbers are concrete and irrelevant of media noise. The number 14 is a conservative estimate or a worst-case scenario figure.

Our previous forecasts over previous years have been particularly accurate, therefor facilitating profits, and there is a high probability of recurrence, not just for this year, but for the next few years!

Some might argue this information is blinking obvious - but is it? Punters are marginally aware of the influence of the Big Five prior to the festival, but largely oblivious to the dialectic evidence, and besides, any initial awareness dissipates quickly once the brouhaha starts - it always does!

Looking ahead to the 2022 Festival the majority will once again mistakenly view each race as a totally random entity with little to no commonality. Furthermore, they will readily employ personal bias, accumulated hype and the last thing they heard into their thought processes before wagering. They will mistakenly believe seasoned and very good trainers like Venetia Williams, Gary Moore and Kim Bailey et al will have equal opportunities, and the same right to win individual races as per the Big Five - they do not, they will not!

We fully expect a similar showing from the Big Five this year. For the record we examine their winning totals from 2017 when Gordon Elliott ostensibly came to the fore. We had previously predicted Henry De Bromhead replacing Paul Nicholls as number 4 seed.

We must recognise Paul Nicholls poor returns in the past five years. We note from his 46 Cheltenham Festival winners only 6 have come in the last 5 seasons, though we do expect him to have a winner or two this year!

For the record, we recorded 4 winners for the banned Gordon Elliott for 2021 though horses prepared and schooled by him won 6 races. Had he not been so thoughtless (a nice way of saying it) he would have been top trainer with 6 winners, whilst Willie Mullins and Henry De Bromhead would have scored 5.

Counting back from 2017 these trainers have won 82 of the 140 races for an average of 16.4 per Festival so that number has now become our par figure. This year our reader will already know who is going to supply over 59% of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival winners!

Just to remind ourselves last year's Festival produced wins for just 4 UK trainers. This means if we removed the 2 races won by Nicky Henderson only 3 races were won by UK based trainers, and one of those was an Irishman (Jonjo O'Neill). This is not domination, it is sovereignty and from a betting perspective the reality tells us to accept the fact now! Sue Smith and Will Biddick were the other two UK winning trainers.

One more point regarding Gordon Elliott aged 43. Can you imagine how he was feeling on the side-lines last year watching his horses win? At that moment he was thinking of and planning for 2022 and in particular handicap hurdles. His prowess in handicap hurdles at the Cheltenham Festival since 2017 is well known. He shows a profit of £68.89 profit to a £1 stake at Betfair SP when backing every one of his runners. This category of winner is responsible for 10 of his 32 Cheltenham Festival winners. We have reason to believe he is preparing another typically strong squad for 2022.

Given the facts above we are certain the 5 trainers registered on our ranking board will win the vast majority of the races this year. Even without knowing the final declarations one could expect the top five winning close to 20 of the 27 races, meaning the other 100 plus trainers feeding from scraps off the top table.

Acknowledging these figures highlights the folly of betting outside the top 5. The perceived value of that action is already compromised by the mathematics before the tapes go up for the first race. Yes, the mathematics says there will be another fairy story winner this year, but the chances of the reader finding it are remote. Our advice for each and every race this year is to put a line through and eliminate all those runners not trained by our ranked trainers.

Enjoy the Festival!

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