YES, destination Closutton mid-week was a parade of NH stars with Grade 1 winners coming at every angle and that was before there was any talk of new recruits, and the next wave of potential appearing.

Opposition trainers are in even more of a quandary as, par for the course at this stage, Willie is not sure where he will play his aces.

You don’t know where to target your decent horse because the champion trainer is keeping all options open and it could be hurdles or novice chases for many of his better horses.

There was the record 10 winners last season at the Cheltenham Festival and the Champion Chase was added to complete the full set of championship races.

Duck and dive

And if he comments about a Grade 1 and Festival winner “I think he’s a horse we haven’t seen the very best of at all yet” then it’s time to duck and dive. (He even provided the ducks himself this week!)

Of the younger horses, Facile Vega leads the way in achievement and in the comments - “I haven’t seen a horse that I’m looking forward to as much.”

He’s best priced at 9/4 for the Supreme and 4/1 for the Ballymore before he’s jumped a hurdle in public,with some tipsters actually recommending him at those Supreme odds.

Yet, have we been here before? Kilcruit went off 10/11 for his Champion Bumper (Facile Vega was 15/8) and has since come up short of expectations. And the road to Supreme Novice success is paved with top bumper winners Cousin Vinny, Dubguib and Cue Card.

It looks as though we’ll not see Facile Vega very much either in the build-up. I think a sit and wait policy looks a lot safer.

Who knew Constitution Hill was sitting in hiding this time last season?

THERE was quite a bit of adieu, to you and you and you this week in our racing world.

Sadly, it was a last farewell to two hugely popular Irish-trained horses in the 2006 Gold Cup winner War Of Attrition and to the multiple Group 1 winner and sire Rock Of Gibraltar.

A little less sad were the farewells from the track to another hugely popular in a short period of time horse in Princess Zoe and the a more fleeting star in the charismatic two-year-old Blackbeard.

Rock Of Gibraltar’s unbeaten Group 1 sequence in the 2002 season that led to an unlucky defeat at the Breeders’ Cup stands higher than many subsequent Group 1 winners that may have received more adulation.

There are lots of debates and comments on what we want from racing coverage and how to ‘sell’ racing to those with little interest.

On a simple scale, there is nothing to match a top-class chase in full flight over an obstacle. Such a horse was War Of Attrition, the 2006 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner.

There an old quote in the back of the mind from Davy Russell who rode him in the second half of his career, something in the manner of – “I do this job to ride a horse like this.”

His career might not have been as long as it could have been but he was truly a horse to warm the winter months.

THE news was released this week that Irish Racing will continue to be broadcast on the RacingTV platform. A few twitter polls seemed to suggest a 60-40 split against the decision and a preference for Sky/At the Races.

Of course, the free to a wider audience with a Sky subscription is a big plus and the incidents of too many meetings on RacingTV on big Festival and summer Saturdays are an added negative with split screen coverage too frequent.

We do though have short memories and Sky fans must filter in the frequent ad breaks that can become tedious as well as their own split screens to cater for their foreign racing and Newbury joins Sky from January 2024.

For the price of three takeaway coffees a month, I’d have RacingTV’s superior line up for the build-up and coverage of the big meetings.