The bookies lost a serious amount of cash on money back specials at Cheltenham

The 2016 Cheltenham Festival was one for the punters.

At the end of the festival on Friday, it was estimated that bookmakers in the UK and Ireland suffered a combined loss of £60million (€77million). Victories for heavily backed favourites, such as Vatour, Don Cossack and Thistlecrack, cleaned out bookmakers, and they were reportedly hit to tune of €12 million on Thursday alone in Ireland. It's now emerged that even when horses were losing races, punters were still coming out ahead of bookmakers. [caption id="attachment_70594" align="aligncenter" width="638"] Vautour ridden by Ruby Walsh on the way to winning the Ryanair Chase[/caption]       According to Hayley O'Connor of Ladbrokes: "The initial results were unimaginably bad for us, and when we thought it couldn't get worse, we saw what we gave back to customers on our specials." The company's money back specials cost them €1.7 million. The heavily backed Ivanovich Gorbatov cost the bookmaker €385,000 on Friday, as they were refunding losing bets on the first race if the favourite won. While victories for Un De Seaux and Josses Order resulted in €400,000 being refunded to customers. "It seems even the losers were winners for the punters," O'Connor said.