Cheltenham 2018 tips: Best bets and race preview for Champion Hurdle
CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL will host seven races on Tuesday but the Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy is the one everyone really wants to win.
Buveur D'Air (left) will start as Champion Hurdle favourite with Faugheen (right) in the mix
The race, open to horses of four years or older, has been run at Cheltenham since its inaugurating in 1927 and this year carries a first prize of £266,384.
Willie Mullins trained four winners out of six races between 2011 and 2016 - but Nicky Henderson struck a Cheltenham Festival blow back when 5/1 shot Buveur D’Air cantered home by four-and-a-half lengths.
And after a particularly wet and snowy February and March, it has been confirmed that the Festival will start on heavy ground (officially heavy, soft in places) for the first time since 1982.
Daily Express and Sunday Express man The Scout, officially Britain’s best horse-racing tipster, has run his experienced eye over the field and come up with a winner.
3.30pm Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy
BUVEUR D'AIR should make it 10 straight wins when he defends his Champion Hurdle crown.
Since landing last year’s hurdling blue riband impressively from ultra-reliable stablemate My Tent Or Yours, Nicky Henderson’s stable star has not put a foot wrong.
He beat that same rival at Aintree before winning the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle and the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.
Buveur D'Air won the title last year - and has been tipped to do so again
He rounded off his Cheltenham preparations with a bloodless win at Sandown from two vastly inferior rivals, where unsurprisingly he was long odds-on.
But that was a nice pipe-opener and he now be fully focused for today’s task.
My Tent Or Yours always gives his running and each-way backers may pin their faith in the 11-year-old, but he is getting a little long in the tooth for a race like this.
Faugheen has been a long way from his best form
There are big question marks against the names of the two Willie Mullins’ runners Faugheen and Yorkhill.
The former has been well below his best in two outings this term, while the latter has suffered wide-margin defeats over fences in his two runs following a lengthy spell off the track.
They have plenty to prove and it will be a masterful piece of training by Mullins to get either of them back to their best.
The return to hurdles may have a beneficial effect on Yorkhill, who it must be remembered won ten of his 12 starts over hurdles before his disastrously short spell as a chaser.
Clearly unsuited to the bigger obstacles, Yorkhill could show his true colours.
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Mullins also saddles Wicklow Brave and Melon. Like My Tent Or Yours, Wicklow Brave is in the veteran stage of his career and there may be some each-way value in Melon, who is only six and hasn’t got that many miles on the clock.
He was a decent second in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle last season and a return to that sort of form could easily put him in the shake-up although he will have to go a bit to beat the market leader, who will be partnered by Barry Geraghty.