ONE of last week’s biggest talking points wasn’t the action at Cheltenham surprisingly, it was a race up at Huntingdon on Thursday instead. It won’t be often that a maiden hurdle at the track has so many eyes on it, but the €1.4 million purchase Palladium brought plenty of interest on his hurdling debut, writes Page Fuller.

Having won the German Derby, connections clearly hoped that he would transfer that ability to his hurdles. Unfortunately for Nicky Henderson, it is reported that he may not have been the most natural to begin with in the jumping department, so prep for the race wasn’t as straightforward as it could have been.

He may have made hard work of the race, but I actually think there were a lot of positives to take away from it. Nicky Henderson may have thought he was a bit short of work owing to all the time spent on his jumping, but it certainly paid off. His Jump Index of 8.8 is one of the highest we have seen from juveniles this season. Only East India Dock has achieved higher, clocking an 8.9 when winning at Cheltenham in November (he scored slightly lower, 8.5, when winning on Saturday).

He also didn’t seem to handle the ground, there were only three horses in the race with stride lengths shorter than his average of 6.29 metres. This, to me, demonstrated how much his legs were ‘tied together’ on ground, which proved quite testing for the rest of the day.

He’s supposedly heading for the Adonis at Kempton next, which typically produces far less testing ground. Back against his own age as well, and putting all of that jumping practice to good use, I think we are sure to see a different animal. I’m looking forward to seeing him quash any doubts that people will have after this.