Cheltenham Festival 2025: Best Bets for Day 3

With Style Wednesday scheduled for Thursday, BettingLounge's racing expert Conlan goes through some of his favourite bets for the day, and puts them in one place for you. So, let's dive in.

You can also check out all of his selections for the day, written before declarations, so prices may have changed.

🥇 Best Bet

Day 3 of the Festival, promptly named after St. Patrick’s Day, is home to the Ryanair Chase and the Stayers’ Hurdle. Speaking of which, my Best Bet for today goes to Fact To File in the Ryanair Chase.

To his credit, this horse should really be going to the Gold Cup on the final day of the Festival. However, connections clearly deemed it irresponsible to send him into a race with Galopin Des Champs, who he has finished 2nd and 3rd behind in two of his three runs this season, whereas in the third of these runs he finished ahead of him over a shorter trip, which is around a furlong less than the trip he needs to see out today.

As alluded to in my tips for Day 3 of the festival, the main issue that Willie Mullins and Fact To File may encounter is the threat of Il Est Francais due to the pace he can serve up as a frontrunner.

If a plan is in place for this, the raw quality that he has at his disposal should be enough to justify the favouritism he sees in the market currently.

A bit of cut in the ground would go a long way to support his claim too, which is looking to be a possibility with the forecast ground being good to soft, with sporadic showers and watering of the track to follow.

🥈 Next Best

My Next Best bet for the third day of the Festival has to go to the exciting mare Maughreen.

There is a reason why members of the Closutton Racing Club will be turning up in numbers to watch her take part in her first ever graded race, with her winning her debut bumper at Leopardstown by an 11-length stretch, followed by an impressive performance at the same track over a year later over hurdles.

Trained by Willie Mullins, who is looking to win this race for the 6th time in 10 years, she will be the hope for the Irish to bring the merit of this race back to the Emerald Isle, having not won it for the last 3 years.

The relation she has to Faugheen on her dam's side has more than likely contributed to the attention this mare has received over the past couple of years, but she has put up the performances to repay the faith and I think she’ll go on to do it on the greatest stage of them all.