The selection put up the best performance of her career to the blue riband of hurdling at last year’s Cheltenham FestivalHoneysuckle delivered the best performance of her career to win last year’s Champion Hurdle and there is no reason to suspect any of the also-rans 12 months ago can narrow the gap this time.Appreciate It and Teahupoo, by contrast, are fresh opponents for Honeysuckle with considerable scope for improvement. The time of Teahupoo’s recent Grade Three win at Gowran Park suggests the form is stronger than it might have looked. Continue reading...
The 2021 six-times Festival victor will chase more glory but faces strong competition from Paul Townend and Davy RussellThe fans will be back at Cheltenham this week and they will have a new favourite to roar home as the four-day drama unfolds. For 15 glorious years from 2004, “What’s Ruby on?” was the first question on many punters’ minds before any big race at the Festival. Now “What’s Rachael riding?” will be the starting point before the money goes down, as last season’s leading rider at the meeting attempts to defend her crown.Rachael Blackmore’s six winners at the 2021 Festival proved that sporting history can be made even when there is no one there to remember the moment. Continue reading...
A positive four days in Gloucestershire can start to repair the damage caused by a leading trainer sitting on a dead horseThe strangest, quietest and most surreal of Cheltenham Festivals, a meeting in front of empty stands that was beyond anyone’s imagination not much more than a year ago, will open on Tuesday with a stronger sense than ever that it is at the centre of the public gaze.It is a little over two weeks since a grotesque image emerged which showed the leading trainer Gordon Elliott sitting – and posing – on a horse that had died on his gallops. As a result, National Hunt racing begins its biggest week with its standing diminished, because of a photograph that...
Entries for this year’s handicaps are down by about 20%, seemingly for a variety of reasons linked to the pandemicFor dedicated punters, the Cheltenham Festival started on Wednesday, when the weights were published for the meeting’s nine handicaps, while the chancellor was simultaneously setting out his plans to pay off the biggest national debt mountain since the second world war. There is probably a joke in there somewhere, for the cynics and stoics at least.Entries for this year’s handicaps are down by about 20%, seemingly for a variety of reasons linked mainly to the coronavirus pandemic, leading to a drop in entries from Ireland, in particular. The fact that owners cannot attend also probably means that there is less incentive...
Despite their company ending sponsorship of trainer’s yard, Noel and Valerie Moran are yet to remove high-profile trioFour horses with leading chances at the Cheltenham Festival later this month left Gordon Elliott’s yard on Tuesday, but the owners of three more Festival favourites confirmed on Wednesday morning that, for now at least, their horses are still in Elliott’s stable.Rumours circulating on Tuesday evening suggested that Noel and Valerie Moran, whose company eCOMM Merchant Solutions terminated its sponsorship of Elliott’s yard earlier in the day, had moved Zanahiyr, The Bosses Oscar and Grand Roi out of the stable. The horses are favourite for the Triumph Hurdle, the Pertemps Final and the Coral Cup, respectively. Related: Gordon Elliott and Rob James await...