Are you ready to go the distance at the Cheltenham Festival?

Coral are offering two distance betting specials on the four Championship races at the Cheltenham Festival, and there is one punt that looks pure Gold for the punters.

The firm make the Gold Cup their 7/4 favourite to provide the biggest winning margin, with the Queen Mother Champion Chase and World Hurdle both priced up at 9/4 and the Champion Hurdle at 11/2.

It’s a market which needs some research, so we have taken a look at the results over the last five years (2009-2013) in a bid to take out all the hard work and narrow down which could be the best bet.

In the Gold Cup, the average winning distance is 7.25 lengths, with Kauto Star registering the biggest winning margin of 13 lengths in 2009.

The 2010, 2011, and 2013 runnings were all won by seven lengths.

The Queen Mother Champion Chase comes out with the biggest winning average of 7.65 lengths.

However, last year’s runaway win by Sprinter Sacre is largely responsible for that figure, and if you take out his win then the average over the previous four years falls dramatically to 4.8.

When comparing the World Hurdle and Champion Hurdle, the figures are very similar.

The average winning distance in the former is 2.85 lengths, with the success of Big Buck’s in 2010 the biggest at 3.25 lengths.

The Champion Hurdle weighs in with an average winning margin of just two lengths.

Honours for the widest winning margin go to Rock On Ruby who scored by 3.75 lengths from Overturn in 2012, but in all honesty that wasn’t the strongest of renewals.

Taking all the above into account, the Gold Cup looks the best bet at 7/4 to provide the widest winning margin in the four Championship races, especially as Bobs Worth is unbeaten at the track and looks to hold rock solid credentials of retaining his crown.

Coral are also betting on what the combined winning distance of the four Championship races will be.

They make 12-18 lengths their 6/4 favourite, with under 12 lengths and over 18 lengths both 7/4 shots.

The average over the last five years is 19.75 lengths, but if we once again take out Sprinter Sacre’s phenomenal performance in last year’s Queen Mother it falls to 16.9.

That makes 12-18 and over 18 look the safest betting propositions as far as the stats are concerned.