Supreme Novices' Hurdle 2016 - Festival Focus

Air Raid - Buveur D'Air looks the play to take on Min with in the opener.

It’s that time of year again, as the countdown to the Cheltenham Festival begins in earnest.

Therefore it’s also the time for a look ahead to the greatest week of the year in my Festival Focus posts.

Sadly, time constraints are likely going to prevent me going as in depth as years past this time around but after a good, and at times unlucky, festival year I’m hopeful of picking out plenty of winners at what will hopefully be some decent prices.

With Willie Mullins set to dominate the opening day of the festival (as he also did last year) it’s tough to be massively confident in tipping anything else in the feature races on day one and the best chance of finding a big-priced winner is likely going to come in the handicaps.

However of the day one hotpots I don’t think there’s anyone out there who would argue that Min in the opener is the potential weak leg of the big 4-fold.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s looked impressive in his two Irish starts to date and more than justified the hype, but this looks a hot supreme in behind and there is some talented animals trading at some big prices in behind as a result.

Is Min the most likely winner? Probably, but Altior definitely has stronger form in the book and is six times the price in some books. That tells you that the bookies are running scared of Mullins, Walsh and Ricci taking down the festival opener for the fourth straight year and at least offers some value in the race given the favourite is grossly under-priced.

Nicky Henderson, in addition to Altior, also has Buveur D’Air a horse that put in the most impressive novice hurdle performance I’ve seen this season on his debut at Newbury.

The form of the race continues to be franked with runner-up Wait For Me winning again earlier this week, in spite of some iffy jumping. Several horses in behind have also come out and won since including Saturday’s impressive Haydock scorer Bun Doran and the race already looks like being one of the strongest novice pieces of form around.

Buveur D’Air hasn’t run since and as a result of the exploits of his stable mate and Min has drifted back out in price having been a bit shorter following his win. He’s due to run on Friday though and if he puts in a performance even half as impressive as he did on debut then he will only shorten up again.

With Min potentially likely to scare a few off we could end up with a small field by Supreme standards, therefore at 10/1 for a trainer with a good record in the race Buveur D’Air rates the value bet to spring somewhat of a surprise in the opener and at worst fill a place behind another potential Mullins superstar.

Recommendation:

Buveur D’Air 0.5pt each-way @ 10/1 (Sky Bet, Stan James) [1,2,3 1/4 odds]