SHAKIRA IS THE APPLE OF MY EYE

APPLE’S SHAKIRA has impressed me in every one of her hurdle runs this season and I expect her to confirm my verdict that she is the best juvenile hurdler we have seen in the Triumph Hurdle.

The mount of Barry Geraghty is a sister to high-class Apple’s Jade, who finished second to Ivanovich Gorbatov in the 2016 Triumph Hurdle.

All her three authoritative wins have come at Cheltenham, including brushing aside Nube Negra, who was a very respectable third in Wednesday’s Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle.

I like FLYING TIGER in the Vincent O’Brien County Hurdle. He won the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle at the meeting last year and has run respectably all season.

He has the right profile for this race and I like the booking of top jockey Noel Fehily.

When my partner, trainer Lucinda Russell, won the 2012 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle with Brindisi Breeze, he came to the Festival off the back of a win in the Grade Two Prestige Novices’ Hurdle. CHEF DES

OBEAUX has followed the same route and it was eyecatching how relentlessly the Nicky Hendersontrained gelding galloped on that day in the sort of arduous conditions he will face again this afternoon.

I saw SIR JACK YEATS win at Kelso and he is a young horse who looks a decent each-way shout in the Foxhunters’ Chase for Newmarket trainer Richard Spencer.

DEAL D’ESTRUVAL is my pick for the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys Handicap Hurdle, while I am going for my jockey son Tom to finish the meeting with a winner on the David Pipe-trained

VANITEUX in the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase. He looks to have had this contest as a longterm plan.