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.

Festival Focus - Champion Bumper 2015

Electric Dreams - Pylonthepressure has been impressive and is a contender in the Bumper.

With the entries finally revealed for the Champion Bumper and Bet365 having recently gone NRNB on all races at the festival the time is right to fire a couple of darts at day two’s final race.

Somewhat of a Willie Mullins benefit in recent years the Bumper is usually a very tricky race to get to the bottom of ante-post, but the two I like the look of will almost certainly start shorter than their current prices if they do line up and with the NRNB concession, if they don’t you lose nothing.

Unlike the other Festival Focus posts I won’t spend lines and lines of text evaluating each likely runner’s chances and why they will or won’t win as there are so many runners in the Bumper coming here with unblemished records made up of wide margin wins I’d be repeating the same things over and over again.

Instead I’m just going to focus on the two horses that have caught my eye for the race, because at the end of the day there’s not much tangible form to go on for the Bumper so visual impression and potential makes up a huge part of the selection process.

As one would expect Willie Mullins’ sextet dominate the market and current favourite Bordini has looked good in two starts under rules to date including winning a Listed event last time out. But it’s actually the horse behind him in the betting, for the same connections, that is my first shout for this year’s Bumper.