TO review the Irish National Hunt scene on a yearly basis is a somewhat imperfect practice, given you’re dealing with the second half of last season and the first half of the current season.

You have the answers from last season but still mostly questions from this term. That is because, rightly or wrongly, so much is defined by four days at the Cheltenham Festival in the middle of March.

Galopin Des Champs and State Man provide a fine illustration of this predicament. The former was sublime in the Gold Cup, backing up his excellent performance in the Irish equivalent at the Dublin Racing Festival. He has been beaten since in the John Durkan and now he has questions to answer, but when all is said and done, you can never take away his Cheltenham title.

No horse on either side of the Irish Sea won more Grade 1s than State Man last season - or this year if we want to stay true to the timeframe - yet he came up short against potentially one of the best two-mile hurdlers of all time in Constitution Hill in the Champion Hurdle. That seems a little unfair to him, to define him that way, especially given his thoroughly admirable consistency, and in a perfect world, he’ll get get closer to Constitution Hill next March, but the odds suggest he is up against it.

Of course both are trained by Willie Mullins, whom they helped to secure a 17th trainers’ championship by his widest margin yet over perennial runner-up Gordon Elliott.

The master of Closutton had another superb year, headlined by six winners at Cheltenham, that of course also included a second win in the Champion Chase with the excellent Energumene. The gloriously simple straightforward nature to the eight-year-old’s title defence was at odds to his trainer’s previous record in a race that had seemed so elusive to him.

Mullins also hit eight winners at the Dublin Racing Festival and 17 at Punchestown, which seems about par for him these days, a remarkable notion in itself, but he has made sublime achievements look ordinary. If he repeats the dose of six winners at Cheltenham in March, he’ll hit a century of Festival winners, and given the team at his disposal, it seems more likely than not. Remarkably, since this time last year, so to include the Christmas festivals, he has won 23 of the 34 Grade 1 races on offer.

The task at hand for his biggest rival has arguably never been as difficult but Elliott has fought back tenaciously this term, and the seeds laid down over the last two seasons are really starting to develop.

His 148 winners in Ireland since the turn of the season is just 40 off his total for the whole of last year’s campaign and he is over €750,000 ahead in prize money of where he was this time last year.

Of course, it’s nothing new that he is strong at this part of the season, and the real test will come later in the campaign when Mullins is rolling at full pelt, but Elliott’s output is as healthy as ever, headlined by him securing three of the first six Grade 1s up for grabs this term.

At the very least, he’ll hope to go better than the three winners he sent out at last year’s Festival. Indeed, over the last two Festivals, he has returned just five winners. He wouldn’t openly admit his disappointment with those totals, but the feeling is that is the overriding feeling from the outside looking in.

For the second year in a row he was strong at Aintree, with three Grade 1 winners, and it was here that Gerri Colombe announced himself as a real bona fide Gold Cup contender with a brilliant performance. His win at Down Royal since has solidified his claims further and he is undoubtedly the brightest star in the Cullentra squad heading into 2024.

For obvious reasons, it was a tough year for Henry de Bromhead off the track, but his team of staff performed admirably in the circumstances, and were thoroughly deserving winners of a special recognition award at the Godolphin Irish Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards.

De Bromhead sent out 79 winners in Ireland for the 2022/’23 season but has already hit 53 this term, so has clearly maintained his level. Significantly, he had three winners at the Cheltenham Festival, none more popular than Honeysuckle in the Mares’ Hurdle, a moment which will be remembered for years to come.

A PENNY for the thoughts of some leading trainers after hearing Barry Connell tell all that Marine Nationale was essentially a good thing for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

Such bullishness is ill advised in this game but to suggest that Connell was in any way naive making such a bold call was well wide of the mark. He has seen it all as an owner, most pointedly with Our Conor, who was tragically killed jumping the third flight in the 2014 Champion Hurdle, so he knows all about the pitfalls, yet was still content to say what he saw, and he saw a star in this son of French Navy.

We all saw it in the Supreme, where a wider audience also recognised the superb talent that is Michael O’Sullivan. While Connell’s backing of Marine Nationale was ballsy, his backing of the Cork rider was as conspicuous, because as a 5lb claimer, it’s technically illogical to be using him in a Grade 1 race. O’Sullivan however, lacked for nothing, and was superbly cool in the white hot heat of the Festival opener, timing his run to perfection to chase down Facile Vega and Paul Townend.

The day got better for O’Sullivan when he went on to win the Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle on Gordon Elliott’s Jazzy Matty. That was undoubtedly the highlight day of a real break-out season - 36 winners at home enough to place him in the top 10 in the jockeys’ table in only his fourth year riding.

Connell’s judgement has been well and truly vindicated in the talent at his disposal. Earlier in the year, he and O’Sullivan took the Grade 1 Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Novice Hurdle with the unexposed and very promising Good Land, while they would go on to win the Leinster National with Espanito Bello, who also gave them a signature handicap success early this term in the Brown Lad.

THERE is unlikely a more appropriately named horse than A Dream To Share, who encapsulated all that is brilliant about this game with a fabulous season for all concerned with him, most notably the 18-year-old student John Gleeson and 85-year-old master John Kiely.

The son of Muhaarar was bred by John’s parents, Brian and Claire, the former of RTÉ Racing fame, and burst on the scene for his young rider with a most impressive late sweep to take the Grade 2 Future Stars bumper at the Dublin Racing Festival. J.P. McManus swooped in to purchase him then and in yet another act of generosity, assured Gleeson he would keep the ride at the Festival.

Gleeson, studying for his Leaving Certificate at the time, he had to get special permission from St Augustine’s College in Dungarvan to take time out of his studies to travel over and what a thrill he must have given his classmates and teachers when he delivered A Dream To Share up the stands’ side to emerge best on his first Festival ride.

In doing so, he provided his much decorated and popular trainer John Kiely with a first success at the meeting. Kiely, now 86, only gave up riding shortly after the pandemic, but now teaming up with his nephew Thomas, still has so much to look forward to with this horse, who completed a big festival treble when he took the Punchestown equivalent race, where he also made history as the first Irish-trained horse to win five bumpers this century.