WILLIE Mullins and Paul Townend are just over a best-priced 11/1 to win the three biggest chases at the Cheltenham Festival - the Champion Chase, Ryanair Chase and Gold Cup - for which entries were revealed this week.

Energumene will forever be remembered as the horse that broke the Champion Chase hoodoo for Mullins last year and looks the one to beat again following a highly promising comeback win in the Hilly Way Chase at Cork. He is likely to run again before the festival, either at the Dublin Racing Festival or in the Clarence House Chase at Ascot again, later this month.

Mullins has four of the seven Irish entries in the 14-strong field for the Champion Chase, with Blue Lord now very much a contender. He finished third to Edwardstone in the Arkle last season but fared much better than Alan King’s gelding over Christmas, when much too good for fellow entries Chacun Pour Soi and Captain Guinness at Leopardstown.

Edwardstone, so impressive in the Tingle Creek on his comeback, unseated Tom Cannon in the Desert Orchid Chase at Kempton on the 27th.

It’s 20/1 bar the top three and it was notable that Shishkin wasn’t among the entries following his disappointing effort in the Tingle Creek. He is however in the Ryanair Chase, for which Allaho tops the billing and could bid to become the first ever horse to win that race for a third time.

Allaho is a general 7/4 shot, owing to the fact he has yet to run this season leading some to doubt on his participation or indeed whether he can win this Grade 1 on his seasonal debut, but Willie Mullins was positive about the Cheveley Park Stud-owned gelding’s preparation this week.

His participation shapes the race because if he wasn’t to make it in time, this would be a much more attractive proposition to the likes of Blue Lord and indeed Joseph O’Brien’s Fakir D’Oudairies who swerved Cheltenham on account of a clash with Allaho last season.

Those three are among a 14-strong Irish entry in a field of 27. Other notable Irish entries include Mouse Morris’s French Dynamite and Stattler (also in Gold Cup), only just touched off by Minella Indo in the Savills New Year’s Day Chase at Tramore over the weekend.

The British entry looks weak, with Shishkin the shortest priced at 7/1, but he is the only home hope among the top nine in the betting, with Eldorado Allen next best at 28/1.

Gold Cup

Galopin Des Champs heads the betting and the 13-strong Irish entry for the Gold Cup. Impressive on his comeback in the John Durkan, it seems likely he will step back up to three miles for the first time since he was a novice hurdler to take on the Irish Gold Cup at the Dublin Racing Festival next month. He is 7/4 to give Mullins and Townend a third Gold Cup.

Mullins has five in the race in total, and intriguingly has included Monkfish, the talented Brown Advisory winner who has been kept off the track with setbacks following the 2021 Punchestown Festival.

If Galopin Des Champs does go to the Irish Gold Cup he is likely to meet last year’s winner Conflated, who looked good again over the course and distance in the Savills Chase, and looks a more likely runner in the Gold Cup this term (went for the Ryanair last season).

He may also meet A Plus Tard, who got a knock on the morning of the Savills, and may run here instead now.

The best British hopes L’Homme Presse, Bravemansgame and Protektorat all seem likely to head straight to the race now.