THERE was plenty of festive cheer at Cheltenham at the weekend, and some exciting performances to dissect, writes Page Fuller. However, it was a horse that settled for the minor honours in the Catesby Estates Handicap Hurdle on Friday (13:15) that caught our eye. Bo Zenith was last seen finishing a very close second in the Grade 1 juvenile hurdle at Aintree in April, and he gave every impression on Friday that his mark of 135 was rather lenient.

It was a muddling race, as they went quite steady to start and then Mirabad, the eventual winner, injected some significant pace into the race by mid-way. At this point, it looked like the rest of the jockeys thought Luke Scott was going too fast, so they decided against chasing him down the back. This means that horses such as Bo Zenith at the back of the field, suddenly had an awful lot of ground to make up.

To put numbers on this, Bo Zenith was only 1.6 seconds behind Mirabad at the end of the seventh furlong. By the end of the 11th furlong, he was a massive 4.81 seconds behind Mirabad. He showed an impressive attitude from that point though and flew home up the hill from his impossible position. He covered the final four furlongs in 52.34 seconds, 3.46 seconds quicker than the winner, which demonstrated how well he managed to do in the closing stages, but also how large the task he faced was.

It was also the quickest final furlongs of any horse over the two days at Cheltenham. He has been notched up 3lb for this effort, but I would be very surprised if that is anywhere near enough to stop him get his head in front next time out.