The Cheltenham World Hurdle will be the fourth race of day three, and is by far the biggest race of the day. It is a three mile run and is a grade 1 hurdle race and allows horses over the age of 4 years.

For 2011, the horse which appears to be standing out with a very good chance of winning the title is Big Bucks, trained by Paul Nicholls. Big Bucks has always been a favourite for the Cheltenham Festival races, and won the World Hurdle at 2009 and 2010’s Cheltenham Festival events.

Big Bucks is now an eight year old, and very soon after the win of last year’s Cheltenham World Hurdle, he was already being marked as the favourite for 2011 – 12 months before the race. The trainer, Paul Nicholls is a champion trainer who has trained many of the successful horses in the UK.

Big Buck’s jockey, Ruby Walsh, is an Irishman and is the Irish National Hunt champion. Walsh showed talent for horse racing when he was very young and won the Irish amateur title two years running at age 18 and 19. At the age of 20 he became professional and since then, he has ridden 25 winning horses at the Cheltenham Festival since 1998 when he won his first Cheltenham race. The success of both Walsh and Big Bucks has made the team a strong favourite for the Cheltenham World Hurdle with odds of 10/11 (from Ladbrokes).

The closest rival to Big Bucks is Punchestown, trained by Nicky Henderson who has been having a lot of wins lately and so it’s very likely that Henderson is going to work hard at this race. Punchestown is also an eight year old horse, and has been entered into the Gold Cup, Ryanair Chase and the World Hurdle.

Punchestown also has a string of wins under its belt and so there is a good chance that he may win the World Hurdle, but Big Bucks will be giving him a run for his money. With the pair against one another it will make a very interesting race indeed, and will have the spectators on the edge of their seats.

Grand Crus is another favourite for the World Hurdle now since the impressive win on 29th January 2011 in the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham. Since this win the odds have been cut from 10/1 to 3/1. This now means that the odds are closing in between the three: Grand Crus, Big Bucks and Punchestown. But who will win?

Regardless of the recent excellent performance from Grand Crus, Big Bucks is still the favourite with the bookies but all three horses have performed very well in recent months and even years, will strong track records. Again, the jockey’s also have excellent track records and so quite honestly this is going to be a close call. One thing is for sure, it’s going to be a hell of a race and one that’ll be talked about for a good while afterwards.