Douvan's Racing Post Arkle appearance is a Grade One prelude to the Champion Hurdle but Willie Mullins's description of him as the best he's ever had makes it difficult to relegate the festival's hottest favourite to any warm-up role.
Even amidst the Champion Hurdle, the breathless anticipation about whether or not Mullins can emulate or even better last year’s unparalleled Day One four-timer, and the overall fascination about the strongest team of horses ever sent to the festival by a single trainer, Douvan still manages to remain a singular act.
A year ago, Mullins pitched the horse into the Supreme Novices Hurdle concerned about whether or not to believe the evidence of his eyes on the home gallops. Douvan proved the most clinical eye in jump racing was bang on the money.
But if anything he has been even more impressive in three starts over fences than he was over the smaller obstacles. Had his trainer confined himself to scattering ‘best ever’ superlatives just the once it might have been dismissed as emotion talking. He hasn’t, and the sky remains the limit for this horse.
Irrelevant
The result is odds that make Douvan a factor merely in accumulators for most punters and a sense that whatever SP he is returned will be mostly irrelevant. What the vast bulk of the festival will want is a performance to justify their own, and more importantly, Mullins’s faith in him.
Douvan won't be the only Mullins and Ruby Walsh hotpot being piled in various accumulative permutations.
Annie Power's final flight fall in 2015 famously saved bookmakers a fortune estimated at €50 million. Now a four-timer on the quartet, Min, Douvan, Annie Power and Vroum Vroum Mag, is being sold as potential punter revenge, inevitably under a pile of 'Ruby Tuesday' puns.
Whatever Annie Power's Champion Hurdle fate, the fact Mullins has an OLBG Mares Hurdle substitute of the calibre of Vroum Vroum Mag is just one manifestation of the overwhelming influence he is likely to bring to bear on Cheltenham 2016.
There may be 20 in the race but it’s hard not suspect the result will come down to a handful, or that Vroum Vroum Mag could prove a class apart again and provide her trainer with a remarkable eighth consecutive win in the race.
Candidate
It doesn’t require keeping your ear too close to the ground to pick up on the confidence surrounding Min as a similar sort of candidate for the opening Supreme Novices Hurdle.
He boasts a similar profile to his stablemates Douvan and Vautour, who won the race in 2014 and 2015, and a colossal reputation which has been backed up by repeated form boosts from those who have finished behind him in two starts.
Mullins also pitches Bellshill and Petit Mouchoir into this race but if there is betting value to be had it come from Supasundae, a horse Jonathan Burke has already described as his best hope for a first festival success.
Bumper form
The horse bred to win Group Ones on the flat boasts some exceptional bumper form and made a valiant attempt to win here last year when up with the pace throughout in a race that ultimately saw the winner, Moon Racer, come from last.
A question mark could be his jumping but it was a lot better on his second start when easily beating Silver Concorde and better ground could be a significant help, as it could to his stable companion Domesday Book in the concluding novices handicap chase.
Derek O’Connor’s services were snapped up by the JP McManus team some time ago for Minella Rocco in the four-mile National Hunt Chase and there was encouragement in the horse’s last outing at Ascot to suggest the point-to-point legend can get him home in front.
