All sorts of odds are flying around ahead of the start of the 2023 Cheltenham Festival although the single most instructive price might be evens about Willie Mullins outscoring Britain on his own this week.
A year ago the festival’s most dominant figure scooped a record 10 winners, the same haul as the entire home team combined. After 2021′s historic 23-5 Irish rout over the four days, it didn’t even feel like a bad outcome for the hosts.
Unprecedented Irish dominance means annual anticipation of the feted Anglo-Irish rivalry has turned into a mismatch: rivalry requires both sides have a shot at winning. Odds of 1-25 about Ireland in the so-called ‘Prestbury Cup’ has turned that convoluted exercise into a non-event.
Instead, it is Mullins’s transformation of the biggest week of the year that so much of Cheltenham revolves around now.
Going into this week his overall tally of festival winners is 88. He will once again have to enter record-breaking territory to reach the once unimaginable century landmark. Only the foolish will bet the house against it happening.
The Irishman’s dominance is so assumed there is almost a blasé element to it.
On the run up to this week it has been the British Horseracing Authority’s witless own goal on the whip issue that has consumed many minds.
Like many others, Mullins has expressed bafflement at the timing of introducing a new regime just in time for the sport’s greatest showpiece when the pressure on jockeys to win is at is most intense.
Cool heads will be required in the saddle this week and there’s none cooler around Cheltenham than Davy Russell.
The story of how the festival’s most successful current rider – with 25 winners in all – has emerged from short-lived retirement to fill in for the injured Jack Kennedy on Gordon Elliott’s horses has a lot of feel-good factor ingredients.
That factor could get multiplied if Rachael Blackmore steers the hugely popular Honeysuckle to success on her final career start on Tuesday in the Close Mares Hurdle.
They have long been racing’s most popular combination and traitorous suggestions the mare’s powers are waning further underline a potential for a glorious ‘last hurrah’ narrative.
Throw in the context of Henry de Bromhead’s 13-year-old son Jack losing his life in September, and how a race title on Thursday will remember him, and it would be an incredibly poignant occasion.
For many it would also be the perfect conclusion to what shapes as perhaps the single most competitive contest of Day One.
Honeysuckle’s old rival Epatante can’t seem to shake her Irish nemesis but has held her form admirably this season. It is her stable companion Marie’s Rock who could prove the biggest obstacle of all though.
The prospect of soft ground conditions ensures enough of a stamina test to see last year’s winner switch from Thursday’s Stayers and try to win this back-to-back.
If, as widely anticipated, Constitution Hill lands the Champion Hurdle, jockey Nico De Boinville could come into this race with his confidence sky-high, just the scenario to properly employ this mare’s devastating final kick up the hill.
Brandy Love appears to be the No.1 hope among a Mullins trio in the Mares but his best chances could be spread over the rest of Tuesday’s card.
The Sporting Life Arkle has been billed as a head-to-head between El Fabiolo and Jonbon for some time and momentum appears to be behind the Irish star.
Even a shuddering mistake four out in last month’s Irish Arkle couldn’t prevent him striding away from a very decent field. In contrast Jonbon pretty much fell in on his final festival prep at Warwick.
Jonbon does hold a slight advantage on El Fabiolo from their clash over flights at Aintree last year.
The Mullins runner however appears a very different proposition now. Another mistake such as the one he had at Leopardstown will prove costly around this speed-favouring Old course. But there has been time to iron that out and he looks a horse rapidly on the upgrade.
Since there’s no better judge in the game than the man who dominates the game, Mullins’s sky-high opinion of Facile Vega in the opening Supreme must get factored in.
The fact also remains though that he blew out spectacularly at the Dublin Racing Festival. Paul Townend got it in the neck for that but Facile Vega is still very short for a horse with so much to prove.
His stable companion EI Etait Temps has nowhere near the same reputation yet looks hard to keep out of the frame.
Tekao is the Mullins ‘buzz’ horse for the Boodles, a race the champion trainer has yet to win. Gaelic Warrior a year ago was even more buzzed and got turned over so Ludus might be an each way alternative.
Gaillard Du Mesnil also looks very short for the concluding National Hunt Chase and on soft ground the dour staying Mahler Mission might at least shake him up.
Cheltenham: 1.30- Il Etait Temps 2.20- El Fabiolo (Nap) 2.50- Fastorslow 3.30- Constitution Hill 4.10- Marie’s Rock 4.50- Ludus 5.30- Mahler Mission
Nap and Double- El Fabiolo & Mahler Mission
