Champion Hurdle Preview - Festival Focus

Let's Make a Rendezvous - Melodic Rendezvous is the value call in the Champion Hurdle

This year’s Champion Hurdle looks a truly vintage renewal and has long looked like being the best race of the festival this year.

The problem with that though is that there is very little value left in the market for a race that has been prominent in everyone’s thoughts since last year’s festival drew to a close.

There was a strong changing of the guard vibe around the champion hurdling division at the start of this season but reigning two-time champion Hurricane Fly has shown he is not going to hand over his crown without a fight by beating his two main challengers from his base in Ireland already this season.

The Fly has never really received the recognition he deserves in my opinion and people will undoubtedly still underestimate him until he is eventually packed off in to retirement.

Festival Focus - The Neptune

Part Puffin, Part Machine - Puffin Billy can win the Neptune on the way to superstardom

This years’ renewal of the Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle (henceforth for the purposes of this piece ‘The Neptune’) has the potential to arguably be the race of the festival given some of the likely combatants.

Of course, as is the case with most of the novice hurdles at the festival some horses at the head of the betting may end up tackling further in the Albert Bartlett or shorter in the Supreme.

One thing is for certain though, even if we do lose one or two of the potential runners in this year’s Neptune we still look set for a truly vintage renewal of the race won so impressively last year by arguably the next big thing in chasing Simonsig.

The best place to start is probably with the most aptly named horse in a novice race – The New One. The Nigel Twiston-Davies inmate’s price has collapsed since his Warwick stroll the weekend before last and although he was undoubtedly impressive that day I’m not quite convinced that in a race with as much strength in depth as this year’s Neptune has that his current price quite reflects his chance.