Which Contenders Headed into the 2026 Cheltenham Festival as the Biggest Favourites?

Picture Willie Mullins in the February drizzle at Leopardstown, watching Mark Walsh point Majborough at the third-last in the Dublin Chase and thinking: “there he is.” Nineteen lengths.

Marine Nationale – reigning Queen Mother Champion Chase hero, 5/4 favourite, the pride of French jumping had nothing. He’d spent the back straight throwing everything he had at a horse who simply didn’t notice, and by the home turn, the race was already over.

When Marine’s connections quietly withdrew their prized asset from the Champion Chase a fortnight later, every punter in Britain and Ireland understood the conversation. You don’t pull a Grade 1 champion from Cheltenham without very good reason.

That was the moment the 2026 Festival’s betting landscape was set in stone. Cheltenham’s favourites’ graveyard had swallowed Constitution Hill whole in 2025, humbled Ballyburn, broken Jonbon’s supporters, and watched Galopin Des Champs, the Gold Cup banker of bankers, leave Prestbury Park without the prize the market had written in his name.

Twelve months on, four horses arrived carrying the kind of ante-post confidence that bookmakers find genuinely uncomfortable, but why was there so much hype? Let’s take a look.

Majborough

When Majborough outstayed stablemate Kargese up the famous hill in the 2024 JCB Triumph Hurdle, Mullins had smiled and said something that raised eyebrows across the weighing room – that this was a Gold Cup horse running in a juvenile’s race. You filed that away. You didn’t quite believe it.

The novice chasing campaign tested connections’ faith sorely. A bad mistake two from home at Cheltenham’s Arkle, beaten as the odds-on jolly, JP McManus’s silks doing their best impression of a horse running in the wrong race.

But horses with genuine ability leave trails even through defeats, and Mullins kept faith through a difficult early season, losing twice before arriving at the Dublin Racing Festival with a new weapon: cheekpieces.

What followed was a stunning transformation. Mark Walsh let him stride on down the back straight; Majborough jumped with enthusiasm he’d rarely shown before, gaining half a length with every fence.

Marine Nationale – five-time Grade 1 winner, the defending champion – tried his best to close, but the ground was too soft and punishing for all… except one.

Nineteen lengths the margin of victory. Walsh afterwards was unambiguous: “That’s the real Majborough today.”

Marine Nationale’s withdrawal handed Majborough a field of ten, with online betting sites thinking that each of them was running for second. The Bovada horse betting odds on the eve of the showdown listed him as the 19/20 frontrunner, and they didn’t need to explain themselves.

Course winner, proven hill stamina, Mullins at the helm, JP’s colours. The only question mark – chasing inexperience, those Arkle gremlins – had been buried deep in the Leopardstown mud.

Bambino Fever

Four-from-four in bumpers. Grade 1 Champion Bumper at Cheltenham. Grade 1 Punchestown Champion Bumper. Beat the boys. Beat them convincingly.

By the time Bambino Fever arrived at Naas in December for her hurdling debut, the 1/4 price reflected inevitability. This was the standout mare of her generation, hill-proven, class-certified, Paul Townend in the saddle. What could possibly go wrong?

Gordon Elliott’s Oldschool Outlaw, that’s what. Jack Kennedy sent the Elliott mare clear on the back straight, and Bambino Fever – for all Townend’s urgings – couldn’t reel her in. Half a length. First defeat of her career.

The market wobbled, but not enough to stop her being the 4/5 favourite to win the Mares’ Novice Hurdle in Gloucestershire.

Here’s why. It was a hurdling debut. The race asked questions over a new discipline that a bumper queen simply hadn’t faced before, against a fit rival trained by one of Ireland’s sharpest operators.

Bambino Fever’s response, at Fairyhouse in January, was the kind of answer that shuts down debate: she made all under Townend, jumped fluently from the front, and passed the post twelve lengths clear at 1/10. That’s form of the highest order.

Wodhooh

Gordon Elliott won one race at the 2025 Cheltenham Festival. One. For a man who’d sent an army across the Irish Sea, it was a humbling return, but that lone winner, Wodhooh in the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle, planted a seed.

Nine wins from ten starts. The sole blemish? Third behind Lossiemouth at Aintree in April 2025 – Lossiemouth, mind you, who’d won eight Grade 1s and who headed to the 2026 Champion Hurdle with the festival’s most formidable CV.

Wodhooh had closed to within two and three-quarter lengths of her, hardly a defeat to be ashamed of.

The season since was relentless. Grade 1 at Ascot. Leopardstown at Christmas: she battled to the front approaching the final flight in the Kerrymount Mares Hurdle, conceding weight to every rival, and stayed on strongly.

Elliott, with the kind of trainer confidence that speaks louder than any press release, skipped a prep run entirely in the new year and aimed straight at the festival. Odds of 8/11 to win the Mares Hurdle suggested he made the right call.

Fact To File

Mullins himself had stood in the winner’s enclosure after the 2025 Ryanair Chase and publicly questioned whether he’d aimed Fact To File at the right race. Nine lengths. The field strung out behind a nine-year-old who’d demolished Grade 1 company so comprehensively that his trainer wondered if he’d been undersold.

The John Durkan at Punchestown confirmed that the appetite remained ferocious. Fact To File went back to what he does best – front-running, battle-hardened, daring rivals to take him on—and delivered another Grade 1 performance of controlled aggression.

Galopin Des Champs had beaten him twice, yes. But always over Gold Cup trips, always at distances that stretched beyond Fact To File’s optimal two-and-a-half miles.

Over that trip, in this race, he was a different animal entirely.

AP McCoy hadn’t been subtle about it. His public endorsement of the Ryanair defence over a Gold Cup tilt carried the weight of a man who understands what horses like this are built for. At 8/13, with Heart Wood lurking as last year’s runner-up and the only legitimate threat, the market backed the logic unreservedly.

The Dream vs Reality

In the end, Cheltenham 2026 proved a brutal leveller for this much-hyped quartet. Majborough, billed as a banker of the week, came up short in the Queen Mother Champion Chase as his jumping fell apart and he was pulled up when the pressure was applied.

Fact To File did not even make it to post for his intended Ryanair defence, scratched on the morning of the race after connections lost faith in the ground.

Bambino Fever, so strongly talked up on the back of her bumper exploits, never landed a blow in the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle and trailed home unplaced.

Only Wodhooh justified her lofty reputation, stepping up when it mattered to land the Mares’ Hurdle and emerge as the sole favourite to actually deliver on the Festival stage.