Willie Mullins, chasing a twelfth win in the race, is inevitably mob-handed, with seven possibles headed by Quevega’s immensely impressive dual Leopardstown winner Facile Vega. Gordon Elliott, who won with Fayonagh and Envoi Allen and trained last year’s winner Sir Gerhard until the eleventh hour, has reduced his entry to two, but he has another massive contender in runaway Down Royal and Navan winner American Mike.
With Milton Harris set to run Mullenbeg at Sandown on Saturday, Mullins and Elliott could saddle as many runners as the entire home team put together, but the Champion Bumper does not always go to form - the Mullins winners have often been among the stable’s least expected - and Cue Card, Moon Racer and Ballyandy have all flown the flag successfully for the UK since 2010.
Poetic Music, bidding to give Fergal O’Brien a first Festival winner in what has been an extraordinary season for the stable, will receive lumps of weight as a four-year-old filly and goes to post unbeaten in three bumpers. She will have her supporters, but neither four-year-olds nor fillies have a good record in the race and so the best chances of keeping the prize at home possibly lie elsewhere.
Hughie Morrison’s Our Jester couldn’t win last season but has made considerable strides since and goes to Cheltenham bidding for a hat-trick, while Emma Lavelle’s Newbury winner Top Dog, who carries the colours of Sandown chairman Nick Mustoe, is another improver. Both have the profile to get involved.
Morrison is best known of course as a Flat trainer, and that’s where Our Jester’s long-term future could lie, but the stable has already enjoyed a Grade 1 hurdle win this year with Not So Sleepy, who dead-heated in the Fighting Fifth, and Morrison has had his moments at the Festival too, saddling Marble Arch to finish second in the 2002 Champion Hurdle and winning what is now the Ultima Chase with Frenchman’s Creek the same year.
Morrison is realistic about Our Jester’s chance, but not without hope. He points out too that the six-year-old is from a family with a good Cheltenham record, although not at the Festival.
He said: “Our Jester is a huge horse - over 17hh - and he was too weak to win last season, although he ran well both times. His mother Cill Rialaig was a late-maturing type who won a Listed bumper at Cheltenham, and his half-sister Urban Artist was another late maturer who also won a Listed bumper there.
“He’s improved a lot since last season to win at Ascot and Lingfield, but he’s probably got to make another quantum leap if he’s to compete with the best from Ireland. I’d be delighted if he finished third or fourth, but he surprised us when he won at Lingfield last time, as they went a slow gallop on a track that wouldn’t have suited him, and he beat a perfectly decent horse.”
Cill Rialaig and Urban Artist went on to race on the Flat, Cill Rialaig winning the Duke Of Edinburgh Handicap at Royal Ascot and both achieving BHA ratings in the low 100s. While Our Jester has the physique to do well over obstacles, but Morrison already has one eye on the Flat and has been given encouragement in that direction by none other than champion jockey Oisin Murphy.
He revealed: “Oisin’s great aunt bred Our Jester, and he told me back in November what a good mover he thought the horse was. As a Flat trainer I won’t discourage the owners if they want to go that way. While he’s a big horse, he’s not slow.”
Our Jester won’t be heading to Cheltenham alone, for Morrison also plans to run Not So Sleepy in the Unibet Champion Hurdle and Third Wind in the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle.
He said: “Half of our jumps team look like making it to Cheltenham, which is not bad for a Flat stable, and we’d have had another there in the Martin Pipe, but he won’t make the cut.
“Not So Sleepy is the highest-rated hurdler in the country (he was conceding Epatante the weight-for-sex allowance in the Fighting Fifth), and he’ll be having a day out in the Champion Hurdle, in which he was fifth last year. Third Wind will try to improve on his fourth in the Pertemps two years ago.
“Third Wind hasn’t been in quite the same form this season, but the handicapper has given him a chance and you never know.”
Lavelle, whose Cheltenham team will be led by Stayers’ Hurdle winner Paisley Park, is delighted with the shape in which she has Top Dog, and she refuses to be daunted by the strength of the Irish team.
She said: “The Irish have had a bit of a stranglehold on the race of late and there are some big reputations coming over, but Top Dog has good form at Cheltenham and you’ve got to be in it to win it. I don’t go along with the idea that the Irish are going to win everything at Cheltenham and so we should go elsewhere, as that’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
“Top Dog is tough, he’s got a good bit of experience, and he should have won at Cheltenham on his first start for me, since when he’s run well again at Ascot and won at Newbury. I’m running him because I think he has the right mentality and the right style of racing to suit a race like that.
“Going left at the end of his races, as he was still doing at Newbury, is not helpful, but there’s no physical reason for him doing it. He’s not running away from the stick, and he doesn’t do it at home - it’s only at the end of his race.
“I definitely think he warrants a crack at the big one.”