Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham

The Cheltenham N.H. festival is now probably the highest-profile race meeting of the entire year in the U.K. and Ireland, and we must hope for the sake of owners, trainers and jockeys, not to mention punters and bookmakers and ordinary racegoers, that the meeting goes ahead despite the unpleasant conditions. There have been plenty of suprise results here and historically it is not a good meeting for favourites - we even remember one meeting when no favourites won at all! However, although we like to bet against the favourites, our feeling this time is that the fancied horses will come out on top.

Today´s top event is the Champion Hurdle at 16.20 CET and the betting suggests that it is a 3 -horse race between Hurricane Fly (Willie Mullins/ Ruby Walsh), Zarkandar (Paul Nicholls/ Daryl Jacob) and Rock on Ruby (Harry Fry/ Noel Fehily) and we shall be surprised if one of this trio does not win. Rock on Ruby won last year, with the Fly third at odds-on, the 2010 winner Binocular (Nicky Henderson/ Tony McCoy) fourth and Zarkandar fifth, but Hurricane Fly was not at his best that day and we are hopeful that he can reverse the form- especially on this soft ground, which will probably favour him and Zarkandar and be against Rock on Ruby and Binocular. Hurricane Fly was 16 of his 18 starts since joining Mullins from France, and 14 of these races have been at Grade One level, including this last year. He is top-rated, and we think that the tough Zarkandar - a half-brother to Arc winner Zarkava- is the one to beat. He won the Triumph here in 2011 and is unbeaten in 3 starts this s eason.

It is difficult to know what to think about Rock on Ruby, with the news that he is to wear first-time blinkers coming as a surprise. He is however on no account to make the running, according to his trainer, and the possible lack of pace could be a problem for them all. It looks as if Countrywide Flame (John Quinn/ Denis O´Regan), last year´s Triumph winner, will make the running, but tactics will play a major role here.

Henderson has the best record of any trainer in this race, and also saddles Grandouet (Barry Geraghty) and Khyber Kim (Paddy Brennan). Grandouet has obviously been difficult to train and ran second to Zarkandar here in December on his only 2012 start, while Khyber Kim was runner-up to Binocular in 2010 but has run very rarely since. We cannot fancy them and think that the race lies between the Fly and Zarkandar, especially with the doubts about Rock on Ruby on this ground and with the blinkers on.