Cheltenham 2023: 10 key questions
PLENTY TO PROVE: Facile Vega looked a Cheltenham banker when scoring at Leopardstown at Christmas but the wheels came off in the Dublin Racing Festival. Picture: Healy Racing
Last year’s Champion Bumper hero certainly has the raw talent to bounce back from his bubble-bursting defeat at the Dublin Racing Festival, but five weeks is a tight window in which to do so, especially when he was reportedly lame for a week in the aftermath of Leopardstown.
Facile Vega is obviously a high-class talent but, given the unsustainable pace he went from the get-go, he had a very hard race at Leopardstown and that has to be a big concern for his Supreme Novices’ Hurdle prospects. The fact 23 of the last 26 winners of the Supreme had won on their previous start illustrates the scale of the task facing the son of Festival legend Quevega.
One suspects he will ultimately prove himself a top-class talent but that renaissance may not happen this week.
In truth, it’s very difficult to pick any holes in the red-hot Champion Hurdle favourite.
Nicky Henderson’s charge was incredibly impressive in winning last year’s Supreme by 22 lengths and has since proven that tour de force was no flash in the pan by twice trashing 2020 Champion Hurdle heroine Epatante en route to Grade One glory this season.
He can make the running or sit off the pace, he handles any ground, and his temperament appears to be bombproof. He has the potential to become a true great.
There are, however, two potential negatives to consider. The first is that history tells us that Supreme winners don’t win the Champion Hurdle the following year. You have to go all the way back to Bula in 1971 to find the last horse to complete that double. It’s a bizarre stat that’ll probably not last beyond this year’s Festival but the fact it has stood for 52 years means it shouldn’t be dismissed outright.
The other negative for Constitution Hill’s Champion Hurdle prospects is the presence of a high-class challenger in the Willie Mullins-trained State Man. Last year’s County Hurdle winner is three from three this season and would himself be a red-hot favourite for the day one feature in most other years.
The expectation is he’ll give Constitution Hill a harder race than their respective odds suggest will be the case but it’s still very hard to envisage State Man coming out on top. He’s good, seriously good, but Constitution Hill looks utterly exceptional.
For a multitude of reasons, the heart says yes. Honeysuckle and Rachael Blackmore have lit up the last three Festivals, winning the Mares’ Hurdle in 2020 before landing the last two renewals of the Champion Hurdles.
Some have expressed disappointment at the decision to swerve a showdown with Constitution Hill in the Champion Hurdle but Honeysuckle has clearly lost a little pace along with her aura of invincibility this season so the step up in trip against less talented rivals in the Mares’ Hurdle makes perfect sense. Winning the Mares’ Hurdle for a second time would round things off nicely.
Will she do so? She has every chance, for all that this year’s Mares’ Hurdle looks a deep renewal. The Henry de Bromhead-trained nine-year-old has yet to win this season but her enthusiasm for the game remains as strong as ever and it should be remembered that the horses that finished in front of her – Teahupoo and Klassical Dream in the Hatton’s Grace and State Man in the Irish Champion Hurdle – are far from mugs.
Fairytale Festival farewells are rare – just ask Tiger Roll – but Honeysuckle has the class and will to shine one last time on racing’s biggest stage. Should she do so, it’ll be the most emotional story of the week.
Whether the Challow Novices’ Hurdle should be a Grade One is open to debate but the Newbury race has that status and, in theory at least, it should be a decent trial for the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, a race run over slightly less than a furlong further.
Instead it is anything but with Stage Star last year becoming the 20th successive Challow winner to come unstuck at the Festival the following March. That list includes the likes of Denman, Champ, and Bravemansgame, horses who ultimately went to bigger and better things, just not before being first laid low by the curse of the Challow.
On paper, this year’s Challow winner Hermes Allen looks the part and the fact he won at Cheltenham’s November meeting means he ticks the course box. A very straightforward horse, he looks the best novice hurdler trained in Britain this season but the Irish challenge looks as formidable as ever with the vibes around Impaire Et Passe particularly strong.
Hermes Allen has more than the weight of Challow history to defy this week.
This is a particularly tricky one as the suggestion has always been that this unbeaten son of Saddler Maker has to have a decent dig in the ground to be seen to best effect. A 24-length bumper win on heavy ground at Fairyhouse on his first start for Gordon Elliott illustrated Gerri Colombe’s fondness for the mud and he relished similarly testing conditions when making his Grade One breakthrough in the Faugheen Novice Chase at Limerick last Christmas.
However, he proved himself more ground versatile than previously thought when winning the Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase on good to soft ground at Sandown last time out and Elliott seems unfazed by the prospect of decent Festival ground this week.
One suspects the trainer would still love to see the heavens open on Wednesday morning as Gerri Colombe would be just about unbeatable in such a scenario. But, should that not happen, Gerri Colombe may still be able to prevail as he’s a seriously classy stayer and this year’s Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase looks a weaker-than-usual renewal.
Always likely to be a better chaser than a hurdler, Mighty Potter has certainly looked the part this season, outclassing his opposition in the Drinmore Novice Chase at Fairyhouse last December before running out an even more dominant winner of a decent Grade One contest when scoring at the Dublin Racing Festival last month. A seriously classy individual, he could well be the favourite for the Gold Cup this time next year.
The only slight concern is the only disappointing run of Mighty Potter’s career came at last year’s Festival when he got worked up before the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and was pulled up before the third last after making a mistake at the fourth flight.
However, he has since proven himself to be way better than that and the expectation is that he’ll set the record straight this time.
If he rocks up in the same form he showed when bouncing back to his brilliant best in the Ascot Chase last month he’ll be as dominant a winner of the Ryanair Chase as Allaho was at the last two Festivals.
Nicky Henderson’s charge had something to prove going into Ascot but, stepped up in trip, he made his point in emphatic fashion and there’s nothing in his class in opposition on Thursday.
The horse who gave Ruby Walsh his final Festival winner when scoring in the 2019 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle hasn’t been the most reliable since but when he’s good, he’s really good.
And he does tend to be really good off lengthy breaks, a record that makes his absence since the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle last December could be more of a positive than a negative. That Fairyhouse run, his first in 197 days, was a huge effort as he finished a neck second to Teahupoo and two and a half lengths in front of Honeysuckle.
That’s high-class form and if the best version of Klassical Dream turns up at Cheltenham he’s a big each-way player in an open Stayers’ Hurdle.
Like Facile Vega, things didn’t go to script for Lossiemouth in the Dublin Racing Festival but, unlike her stablemate, she didn’t surrender her unbeaten record without a fight, battling all the way to the line to finish second to stablemate Gala Marceau in the Spring Juvenile Hurdle.
Everything that could have gone wrong on that occasion did so but the way she rallied in adversity showed she has guts as well as style. The downside to that tenacity is she had a harder race than Willie Mullins will have wanted and she hasn’t had that long to recover.
Given she beat Gala Marceau comfortably at Christmas she ought to do so again but Blood Destiny, another stablemate, could well be a tougher nut to crack.
The exciting Blood Destiny didn’t run at the Dublin Racing Festival so will rock up to the Triumph Hurdle a fresh horse and that freshness edge makes him a massive danger.
Should the best version of A Plus Tard line up in the Gold Cup the task facing Galopin Des Champs will be considerably tougher than the favourite’s odds suggest.
The Henry de Bromhead-trained nine-year-old was a spectacularly impressive winner of the blue riband last March but he has only run once since and that wasn’t a pleasant experience as he was pulled up in the Betfair Chase at Haydock in November. Something was clearly amiss that day as A Plus Tard had never finished worse than third in his 19 previous career starts.
The Savills Chase at Leopardstown at Christmas looked the perfect race for A Plus Tard to get back on track but a late setback denied him that chance and his camp opted against trying to get a pre-Festival run into him thereafter.
As a consequence, he returns to defend his Gold Cup crown off the back of a nightmare preparation. He unquestionably has the talent to run another big race but whether he has the race-fitness required for a race that demands so much of a horse has to be a big doubt.
A further complication is the fact that this is a deeper Gold Cup than last year’s. Outside of Constitution Hill, it’s hard to think of a more exciting jumps horse in training than Galopin Des Champs and then there’s King George hero Bravemansgame and Grand National victor Noble Yeats to consider.
To say the task facing A Plus Tard is a considerable one is an understatement. If he pulls it off, it'll be one of the greatest training performances in Cheltenham Festival history.
