Cheltenham Festival, first day: Arkle and Supreme Novices

Two other Grade One races are run at Cheltenham today, the Supreme Novices Hurdle which opens the card at 14.30 CET and the Arkle Challenge Trophy, a novice chase over 2 miles, at 15.05. The former event features Dunguib (Philip Fenton/ Barry O´Connell), the Irish banker of the meeting. He has won his last 8 races (although once disqualified), including all 4 of his hurdles races and was particularly impressive when winning the Champion Bumper at this meeting last year. However he could have an Achilles heel - his jumping; although he has never looked like falling, his jumping has never been fluent and was especially sloppy when easily winning a Grade One at Leopardstown last time.

He finally sprinted past his opponents to win easily on very heavy ground - and today´s much faster going may be another problem. His supporters claim that he will jump better in a larger field going a strong pace, but the bookies seem keen to take him on (many going evens this morning, while he has been odds-on for months) and we agree with this reaction. If there are any chinks in his arnour they will be found out today; the unbeaten Get Me out of Here (Jonjo O´Neill/ Tony McCoy) and Oscar Whisky (Nicky Henderson/ Barry Geraghty), Willie Mullins´two runners Blackstairmountain (Ruby Walsh) and Flat Out (Paul Townend) as well as Philip Hobbs´ Menorah (Richard Johnson) are the 5 most likely to put this to the test.

The Arkle Trphy is anothr red-hot race with at last half a dozen potential winnersa. Mullins and Hemndrson, who are also strongly represented in the first race, now saddle Sports Line (Walsh) and Riverside Theatre (Geraghty) respectively, and both of them belong on the short list. Captain Cee Bee (Eddie Harty/ McCoy) and Sizing Europe (Harry de Bromhead/ Andrew Lynch) are other fancied Irish runners.They met before Christmas, where the latter won, but only after Captain Cee Bee had fallen when looking very dangerous. Our selection is Somersby (Henrietta Knight/ Robert Thornton), who ran well at this meeting last year and is unbeaten in two starts over fences.