If England’s rugby players felt like long shots before their shock win against their all-conquering Irish counterparts at Twickenham on Saturday evening, they might have spared a thought for Britain’s National Hunt trainers approaching Tuesday’s start of the Cheltenham Festival.
There are 28 races at the showpiece event of the jumping season and only two favourites – for the Plate Handicap Chase on Thursday and the Triumph Hurdle the following afternoon – are stabled in British yards. As if that were not ominous enough for the home side, Nicky Henderson – the only British trainer to put up anything more than token resistance to the annual Irish invasion in recent years – goes into the meeting with Constitution Hill, his stable star, on the sidelines and the rest of his string a long way short of its usual form.
