Triumph Hurdle 2016 - Festival Focus

Victory Dance - Let's Dance taken to Triumph in Friday's opener.

The Triumph Hurdle is usually one of the more difficult races to approach ante-post at the Cheltenham festival, but with this year’s renewal looking the widest open of all the major races there is plenty of value to be had.

Last Saturday’s Spring Juvenile Hurdle at Leopardstown quite often has a major bearing on the Triumph Hurdle market and this year is no exception as hot favourite Ivanovich Gorbatov was well and truly put in his place at the weekend.

It’s easy to say now, but he had looked woefully short for both based on what he had achieved to that point and the subsequent drift for the Triumph following Saturday’s comprehensive defeat sees his price more in line with where it should have been all along, though still remains too short in my humble opinion.

Other than the Aidan O’Brien trained favourite, Willie Mullins, Paul Nicholls and Alan King have the top of the market sewn up for the juvenile feature. Alan King in particular looks to have a particularly strong hand with Sceau Royal looking the pick of his squadron to me, he is very slick over his obstacles and has impressed thus far, but he is now half the price of the other horse I like for this race so is bypassed on value grounds.

Horses have tasted defeat in the Spring Juvenile and gone on to win the Triumph – most recently Tiger Roll two years ago – and I fancy that could be the case again this year and I’m not talking about the favourite.