At the time of writing, it still wasn’t clear if Constitution Hill was going to run in the Betfair Fighting Fifth Hurdle (1.15) at Sandown today, with Nicky Henderson pulling one of his runners out of the last at Sandown on account of ground conditions and an inspection called for this morning. This is despite the current champion hurdler winning over this course and distance on heavy ground as a novice hurdler.

You think it’s hard to predict runners for the Festival at this stage of the season? Those days in March often seem to be the only ones that matter any more so sometimes it seems easier.

One set of connections that won’t fret about a Constitution Hill scratch will be those of Love Envoi, whose would have a gilt edged opportunity to land a first Grade 1, having twice finished runner-up at the top level, most notably when playing her part in Honeysuckle’s memorable sign-off win at Cheltenham in the Mares Hurdle last March.

The move the Sandown suits her well, given she is unbeaten in two starts at the track, one of them over this trip and both of them on soft ground, and her trainer Harry Fry, speaking on the Champ.ie podcast this week, was looking forward to getting the seven rising eight-year-old out again.

“She is definitely ready to get started but as with all the horses, they are all likely to improve from their first run, but she is ready to go, it’s a Grade 1 and we’re looking forward to seeing how she gets on,” Fry said.

“She is well in herself at home. I think we’ll find out on Saturday exactly where we are. You’d like to hope there is more improvement but you’ll have to see. Her whole campaign will be geared around a return to the Mares Hurdle. We were a bit gutted not to win that last season but if she can put in that sort of display through the course of the season we will have lots to look forward to.”

You have to go back to 2007 to when Our Ben and David Casey gave Willie Mullins his first Bar One Racing Hilly Way Chase. Bertie Ahern was Taoiseach then and Mary McAleese was president. Mullins has since added 13 more wins in the race so is getting into the territory of Aidan O’Brien’s farming of the Phoenix Stakes. Only Henry de Bromhead (Days Hotel - 2012) and Pat Fahy (Castlegrace Paddy - 2018) have got on the scoresheet since.

The former runs Maskada, last year’s Grand Annual winner, who is an interesting contender with race fitness on side and in receipt of 7lbs from her six rivals, but she really will have it all to do to stop El Fabiolo making it win number 15 for Closutton.

The triple Grade 1 winner handles soft ground well, races like a brute and while he has the odd mistake in him, it didn’t get close to stopping him last term. One very slight concern is the absence of stablemate Dysart Dynamo, who instrumental as a pace angle for all three of the Grade 1s he won last season.