It is hardly Willie Mullins' fault that he is in such a powerful position, with a chance of becoming champion trainer in the UK while based in Ireland. There can't have been a meeting of anywhere near the magnitude of the Cheltenham festival where one trainer looked set to dominate quite so overwhelmingly. But some strange things have happened in the trial races in January and February. Djakadam, Black Hercules and Valseur Lido have fallen, Bellshill ran inexplicably badly (in a race won by the Mullins third string) and now both Faugheen and Arctic Fire are injured and out of the Champion Hurdle. So it's clearly not as easy as just turning up to collect. In some of the most unadventurous tipping ever seen on the internet, I'm going for a horse each day, three of them short-priced favourites and then the each way bargain in the Gold Cup. We can have a bit of a dart at a few other races with the pocket money but these red-hot investments need to go in and the shrewd observer knows how often that doesn't happen so it's a high stakes game as I try to retrieve some of the deficit already accumulated into the bookies' bank so far this year.Faugheen's absence removes the chance of doubling up with Douvan one day one where 2/5 and 1/3 still pay something close to even money but the knock-on effect has been for Annie Power to be made favourite, likely to be re-routed from the Mares race, and brings The New One back into the argument for the Champion Hurdle. That is only of interest to see if I, and also he, can get belated compensation for when we was robbed two years ago. But, more significantly, it apparently leaves the Mares race open for Vroum Vroum Mag.
On Wednesday, in the novices hurdle, nobody who saw Yanworth win the trial race so easily will want to oppose him here because it was made to look very easy indeed and the novice hurdlers don't immediately look a vintage generation. Nothing has yet given him a proper race and even money will be worth having once the ante-post market becomes non-runner no bet.
Thistlecrack (nap) has been kept to hurdles this season rather than go chasing because the World Hurdle appears to have been presented to him as the opposition fallen away or finished too far behind him (as pictured) and so we only really fear the dark horse Different Gravey who was introduced to the betting after bolting up in a handicap last week. But Thistlecrack has the most solid look about him of anything at the festival and that possibly even includes Douvan.
So, if we are still in funds by Friday, the Gold Cup presents us with a list of Irish options all of who have different questions to answer. Don Cossack was my original long term idea of the winner and he might have been in with a chance in the King George when he fell at the last but it looked as if they were going too quick for him- at least as if Vautour was- and the different track and longer distance might be to his advantage but if Smad Place puts in the same spectacular front-running performance as he did in the trial then they will all have to find something to catch him and going from the front has been the way to win a few recent Gold Cups so, at 12/1, he could be backed each way with good reason.
So the treble is Thistlecrack, Yanworth and Vroum Vroum Mag, each done on their own, of course, with an accumulator including Smad Place (each way) for a considerably more modest stake.
But those are the serious bets to depend on which won't be much fun to watch because the week, and recovering the year so far, depends on them.
Dreams of the huge punting windfall- and it's not as if I'm not due one- will depend on landing an unlikely sequence of hopeful selections that potentially multiply up alarmingly in accumualtors.
I'll take on Min, that doesn't seem to be the most vaunted of the Mullins battalion, in the first on Tuesday, with Altior, who has that dubious role of leading the British defence of the Supreme Novices. Sausalito Sunrise, also on Tuesday, has become quite a favourite of mine who won't have helped us get a generous price by winning impressively last Saturday. I wish he hadn't done that, really. Bristol de Mai, in the JLT Novice Chase on Thurs, has become what we might have hoped he'd be, and now looks the part. And, snooping round for one to make the yankee, on the grounds that finishing the same distance behind a putative Faugheen as he did earlier this season, The New One is nominated for the Champion Hurdle more in hope than expectation but, with three of them running on Tuesday, a second yankee can be thrown together in mild desperation, to build something else round Bristol de Mai later in the week.
I realize that most newspaper tipsters write more encouragingly about their selections than I have on some of those but they are industry insiders who get paid to generate enthusiasm for the sport. I'd prefer my reader to enjoy it while doing the sensible thing. There's a lot of money to be lost during Cheltenham week. As long as we land a couple of our big four, that money shouldn't be ours.
It is customary to end this highlight of the horse racing year on the internet with a look beyond, to the Grand National. In among some ante-post wagers on my account is some 25/1 Silviniaco Conti, who was my first thought. He is combined there with a few whose chances at Cheltenham no longer look as good as they were and now, after last week's impressive return to form, he's only 12/1. It is too much to expect he could end an already impressive career by becoming a National winner as well but he jumps and stays and is a class act and so has all the credentials to do so and will be carrying a few quid of mine.