Nicholls downsizes Cheltenham Festival squad with Irish set to make hay

Paul Nicholls is odds-on to win the British trainers’ title for the 13th time this season and the reigning champion paraded several interesting contenders for the Cheltenham Festival here on Thursday, but the extent to which British yards are currently struggling to match their Irish counterparts was also underlined a few minutes later, as Nicholls suggested that he will have “between 12 and 14 runners” during the four-day meeting later this month.

Even 14 runners would represent Nicholls’s smallest Festival team since the fourth day was added in 2005, and he currently has just two entries– Bravemansgame and Stage Star – quoted at single-figure odds. Willie Mullins, by contrast, saddled at least a dozen runners on every day of the 2021 Festival, including 18 on the final afternoon alone, and will expect to return with similar number this year.

Mullins also has eight likely favourites over the four afternoons, including Galopin Des Champs, who could run in either the Turners Novice Chase or the Brown Advisory Novice Chase and would be the most significant opponent for Nicholls’s Bravemansgame in the latter contest.

“He’s a fantastic-looking horse and he’s done everything right,” Nicholls said of Bravemansgame on Thursday. “We got put in our place by Bob Olinger [in the Ballymore Novice Hurdle] last year [but] he’s improved enormously for a summer and I think he’s going to be even better next year when he’s stronger.

“He’s four-from-four this year and he’s now rated 164, which is a high mark for a novice. He’s got class and he jumps and next year he’ll be a serious contender for the King George and Gold Cup.

“No one knows what will turn up and run, but you can only beat what you’re up against. [Galopin Des Champs] has won