Cheltenham Festival: Champion Hurdle preview

Honeysuckle bids to extend her hegemony of the two-mile hurdling division in the feature on what many regard as being the most compelling day of the Cheltenham Festival each year.

Since slamming Annie Mac in her debut in the point-to-point sphere, she's remained hoof-perfect in 14 starts on the racecourse over hurdles.

For all the plaudits, you can still argue that she hasn’t got the full recognition her feats deserve.

Rachael Blackmore’s annus mirabilis last year got racing onto the front pages for all the right reasons, but becoming the first woman to boot home a Champion Hurdle winner meant that trainer Henry de Bromhead and the horse were left a little in the shade.

To Blackmore’s credit, she never sought to hog the limelight and was a reluctant heroine in many ways, conscious that the hierarchy in deciding races is almost always horse-trainer (and stable staff) - jockey, even if that proved beyond the grasp of some of those outside the sport.

If the Honeysuckle who turned up at Prestbury Park last year arrives in the same form, her odds-on price could well be value, but if it’s the version that won the Irish Champion Hurdle, she may be vulnerable.

She was a visually authoritative winner of the highlight on the second day of the Dublin Racing Festival, but a direct comparison with the sectional time performance of the novice Sir Gerhard in the race which followed casts doubts over the substance of that win.

There is a possibility – slight though it may be – that she’s reached the end of the road, that she is now a horse in regression, and when mares in particular start to regress, it can be rapid and irreversible.

However, the probability is that she wasn’t fully wound up for her race at Leopardstown. Just as with humans,