Irish Champion Hurdle likely to be definitive trial for Cheltenham

Well, those who were of the opinion that most of the top horses in the country were housed in the one place, at Willie Mullins’, discovered it wasn’t quite as simple as that over the four days of the Leopardstown Christmas festival Mullins had a reasonably good meeting, winning six of the 28 races, but his dominance was nowhere near as pronounced as some might have anticipated.

There is no doubt that the savage firepower at his disposal has provided some very uncompetitive racing at times so far this campaign.

But Leopardstown told us, as did Fairyhouse on December 1, that lots of other trainers have nice horses to toss into the mix as well.