FINDING the sweet spot between having something to look forward to and not wishing your days away is where I sit with the Cheltenham Festival just now; it is brilliant to build to those four days but there are plenty of good races between now and then, and I don’t intend this column to become utterly Cheltenham-centric.

Still, it is hard to escape the divisive effort of Salvator Mundi in the Grade 2 Moscow Flyer Hurdle with a view to the Supreme.

This can be a time that leads to overreactions – there is relatively little racing compared to Christmas, say, when a race like this would have been just part of the bigger picture, whereas on a quiet January Sunday, it becomes the sole focus.

Salvator Mundi won ugly at Punchestown, doing plenty wrong, not so much racing keen as pulling hard early while hurdling with little fluency, the two perhaps linked.

There was a moment two out when he looked in bother as his rider began to push him along, but it was merely another example of the Townend Tease, that instant where you think a Mullins short one is in trouble only for it to soon be back going best.

The form of the race is suspect, however. The pace was ordinary, and the runner-up Kel Histoire was not seen to best effect, his rider not at his most fluent coming to the last and looking in need of a stiffer test, while it is reasonable to think that both the Elliott and de Bromhead runners are down the pecking order of their respective stables’ novice hurdlers.

More cop on

Mullins will likely get improvement from Salvator Mundi next time because that is what he does but this was his fourth start over hurdles, and one would like to see him start to race with more cop on.

The trainer has won the Supreme seven times, and while Tourist Attraction is before my time, the six since have generally been won by horses that did things right in races, Klassical Dream one that handles the preliminaries poorly but was fine in the race itself.

But Mullins has had plenty of fancied horses that have done things wrong in the Supreme, most of which had their red flags beforehand and Salvator Mundi may be another of those: Getabird (7/4 favourite) went right, Asterion Forlonge (9/4 favourite) went very right, and Dysart Dynamo (9/4 favourite) was too keen, all those since 2018, with Tullyhill (11/4 favourite) another last year.

I am not sure I want to make excuses for a horse with a similar profile here given his price (around 7/2) though it should be pointed out that he could yet shorten due to the shape of the market.

Outside of the front five in the Supreme betting, which only make up 55% in betting percentage terms, there do not seem a lot of obvious runners/contenders, so it is not hard to see the ones tightening up.

One argument on why Salvator Mundi may improve at Cheltenham is better ground.

He wears a tongue-tie so has some breathing issue and horses like that can – in theory – be better on a decent surface though some data suggests the difference is negligible.

In the last five Irish National Hunt seasons, 18,317 individual runners wore a tongue-tie. Their win and place strike-rates on yielding to soft or slower were 8.5% and 25.1% while on yielding or faster those figures were 8.3% and 25.1%, so in the general at least there is little difference.

Cromwell to smash his previous highs

SATURDAY at Fairyhouse was a big day for Gavin Cromwell as he landed a four-timer, giving further notice, if it was needed, that he is turning the Big Three of Irish jumps racing into a Big Four.

There may have been some discontent from Cromwell when he was grouped with Mullins, Elliott and de Bromhead in being excluded from some races this year, but there can be little doubt that he continues on a sharp upward trajectory.

The yard began to take on its current shape with 62 winners in the 2019/’20 season, good for a fifth overall in the trainers’ championship, and his numbers since have been 52 winners (sixth), 54 winners (fifth), 58 winners (fourth) and 72 winners (fourth), breaking through the €1 million prize money barrier for the first time in the last of those.

Already in 2024/’25, Cromwell has 61 winners and over €1.3 million in prize money, so he is sure to smash through previous highs.

It is also interesting to compare where he sits in terms of number of runners relative to the other big yards. At the time of writing, he has had 454 runners, Elliott with 803, Mullins with 503 and de Bromhead 388.

One place those increased numbers have not been seen, however, is at the Cheltenham Festival. Since 2019, Mullins is 42 from 384 at the Festival, Elliott 18/254 and de Bromhead 13/144. Cromwell, on the other hand, has had just 33 runners in that time.

Yet six of them have won, and his win and place strike-rates of 18% and 33.3% at the meeting are best in class for trainers that have had at least 25 runners in that time. Maintaining those figures will be difficult as he will presumably have more runners at the meeting this year, and it will be fascinating to see to what extent he increases the size of his team.

THE entries for the eight Grade 1 races at the Dublin Racing Festival came out last week and it was revealing to see who was in and, perhaps just as importantly, who was out.

Willie Mullins predictably led the way with 47 (39.8%) of the 118 Grade 1 entries while Gordon Elliott was next with 32 (27.1%) though one trainer with notably few engagements was Henry de Bromhead. He has just six (5.1%) entries in all and has nothing in three of the eight Grade 1 races.

This is not anything particularly new for de Bromhead as this it is not a meeting he targets, as opposed to Christmas.

Since the DRF came into being in 2018, de Bromhead has won six races here from 106 runners for win and place strike-rates of 5.7% and 21.7%, Honeysuckle providing three of those wins.

Bigger target

Cheltenham, just five weeks later, is a much bigger target for him. In the same period, he is 19 winners from 150 runners there, for win and place strike-rates of 12.7% and 28.7%, at a meeting where it is arguably harder to win.

As a backer of Workahead for the Supreme, I was initially worried that he had no DRF entry, but the trainer has said since that the plan is to go straight to the Festival, and as perhaps the most impressive maiden hurdle winner over Christmas (Final Demand another contender for that title), he might be able to make his presence felt in a race with a somewhat flaky favourite.