As the dust settles on this year's Cheltenham Festival, David Ord asks do the novice races mean 2024/25 is about to get more interesting?
Sometimes it’s the first thing a person says in the moment of victory that matters.
And when the Racing TV microphone was pushed under Willie Mullins’ nose in the seconds that immediately followed Ballyburn’s runaway win in the Gallagher Novices' Hurdle on Wednesday, he muttered: "That looked a Champion Hurdle performance to me."
Me too, Willie, and my word what a shot in the arm that would be for the division if the master of Closutton decides to roll the dice for another season over timber before the lure of the chasing career wins him over.
The thing with the Cheltenham Festival novice races is, they are the seed-corn for next year’s championship contests, and the absence of Constitution Hill this year shone a light on just how bare that two-mile cupboard is. But now there’s life stirring in there. Lossiemouth won the Mares’ Hurdle, but Mullins is inclined to let her take on the boys next season.
And if Ballyburn is in there – alongside the new champion State Man – all of a sudden, the great man has three top-flight two milers with which to plot a road to Cheltenham.
Clashes are inevitable along the way, especially you suspect at the Dublin Racing Festival, but would such firepower mean he’s open to sending one over for a spin or two in England as well?
When the wheels are back on Constitution Hill, he remains the prized scalp in the division but a programme that you’d expect would be Fighting Fifth, Christmas Hurdle and Champion would look a little less routine if a Lossiemouth or Ballyburn turned up at, say, Newcastle or Kempton on Boxing Day.
Hope springs eternal.
In the two mile chasing division, Gaelic Warrior showed he can go left-handed – and at Cheltenham – by winning the Arkle in a style the size of his engine always suggested he might. Now he could, conceivably, run in any Grade One chase next March but the Champion Chase has to be an option.
It will be for El Fabiolo despite this year’s mishap and there's dual winner Energumene to come back into the equation too following his season on the sidelines. Again, remarkable firepower for one trainer to have and Jonbon might expect a bit more company too at Sandown in the Betfair Tingle Creek.
It doesn't stop there. Fact To File’s Brown Advisory-winning performance was one which suggested he’ll be scoring in Grade One open company next season. Mullins was struggling to find a significant second string to his Gold Cup bow this time around. Now he has a cover shot.
But Dan Skelton is taking aim at the same race with Turners hero Grey Dawning - "definitely the best novice chaser I’ve trained". He’s 162p with Timeform, completely unexposed as a stayer. It’s a trickle, but things are about to get a bit more interesting.
If any race is in need of fresh impetus it’s the Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle. Teahupoo clearly the best of this generation if Irish Point is to be kept away from him, but on the domestic front our foot soldiers are getting well into the veteran stage, the wonderful Paisley Park the first to head into retirement.
So what’s going to chance their arm next year?
Maybe it's Majborough the four-year-old who won the JCB Triumph with the frame of a seven-year-old. Mullins thinks he might be a Gold Cup horse but a novice chasing career that would see him back next year for a Turners or a Brown Advisory? He wasn't entirely convinced as he thought out loud in the Friday afternoon sun.
No this week in March isn't all about the here and now. It can offer hope that spring is indeed around the corner, and more competitive, deeper championship races too.
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