Champion Hurdle LOWDOWN
IT IS a toss-up which will be the most dominating performance this week — the acclaimed film Oppenheimer at the Oscars or Willie Mullins at the Cheltenham Festival. The movie swept the board at the 96th Academy Awards, while Ireland’s champion trainer needs six more winners to reach his Festival century. He is expected to do that in a canter and STATE MAN in the Champion Hurdle looks to be one of his most solid hopes of the week. Paul Townend’s mount is already a Festival winner, having landed the 2022 County Hurdle. He was brushed aside by Constitution Hill in last year’s Champion Hurdle but Townend has always been adamant that his mount was not at his best that day. His three wins this season have been completed in regulation fashion, most recently when he beat Bob Olinger by five-and-a-half lengths to win his second Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown last month. Given the smoothness of his season and the disruption to the campaign of Constitution Hill, a clash between the big two would have been mouthwatering but the latter’s enforced absence means something has to go wrong for there to be an upset. Top-level hurdling can, however, be turned on its head in millisecond moments and by millimetre misjudgments. Waiting in the wings are the Gordon Elliott-trained Irish Point, who has been switched to this race from the Stayers’ Hurdle, and Iberico Lord, whose winning form in the Betfair Hurdle has been boosted by horses who chased him home — third-placed Go Dante and fifth Faivoir were one and two in Saturday’s Imperial Cup at Sandown. But the likelihood is this will be a coronation with a State procession.