IF we say horses can make fools of us, then surely with all the obstacles involved and the work that goes into finding and getting a National Hunt horse to perform at the highest level, there’s more chance of making us into even bigger fools along the way.

A point of amusement this winter has been with the banishment of the ‘middle distance’ Turners Novice Chase from the Cheltenham Festival card, a race that had only four and seven runners in two of the last three years.

As luck would have it, once it’s gone, this year there seems an abundance of good novices that would be fitted into all three of the Festival Grade 1 novices’ chases.

With the entries for the Dublin Racing Festival revealed this week, the Irish novice chase challengers for Cheltenham look strong. Majborough, Ile Atlantique, Ballyburn, Impaire Et Passe, Champ Kiely and Lecky Watson from Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott’s Firefox, Down Memory Lane and Touch Me Not and the Henry de Bromhead-trained Inthepocket are all in the mix and could have run in either the Arkle or the Turners.

Dancing City from Willie and Stellar Story, Croke Park and Better Days Ahead from Gordon are also all entered in the two-mile, five-furlong novice at the Dublin Racing Festival.

It will be interesting what races some of them ultimately appear in.

Another race to get a bit of flak from time to time, in discussions over dropping races at the Festival, is the Champion Bumper and it was a bit disappointing to see the last two winners, A Dream To Share and Jasmin De Vaux, both of whom looked good prospects at the time of their wins, now look like horses with limited options over hurdles.

French-bred invasion

If banishing the Turners may have looked premature now, all this talk of the need to combat the continuous French-bred invasion by getting our Irish and British home-bred horses jumping and racing earlier, has created much ado and brought forth different opinions in the recent weeks.

That French invasion seems to have been miraculously curtailed this season, so far.

The top Grade 1-winning novice hurdlers, The Yellow Clay, Potters Charm and The New Lion, are Irish-bred. So are the current Triumph and Champion Bumper favourites, Hello Neighbour and Windbeneathmywings. Add in Final Demand, Ballygunner Castle, Workhead, Future Prospect as potential top novices, and over fences, The Jukebox Man, Ballyburn and Down Memory Lane are also top grade and bingo, we have a fine team of Irish-breds.

In reality, when you use the recent Grade 1 novice hurdles from the Festival as a guide, it’s not been as concerning on the actual racetrack as you would be expected to see, despite French-bred youngsters being in demand.

Looking at the past five years, the breeding stats are:

Supreme: Irish-bred 4 British-bred 1

Ballymore: Irish-bred 3 French-bred 2

Albert Bartlett: Irish-bred 4 French-bred 1

Triumph: British-bred 1 French-bred 4

The ‘younger’ race, the Triumph Hurdle, is the one that stands out, perhaps adding to the claim that these French juveniles are up and running much faster. The British-bred Quilixios, also began his racing career in France. You have to go back to Pentland Hills in 2019 to find the old style, former flat racer, to go over hurdles and then win a Triumph.

Perhaps it will change this year with British-bred and flat-raced East India Dock also duelling for favouritism with the once-raced French import Lulamba, representing the more recent style of going to France for the younger talent. Though it remains to be seen if he is another talking horse!