The pot is beginning to boil as Cheltenham draws near

It’s weeks since I last presented a winning docket for payment at my friendly bookmakers. I’m one for Trixies, Yankees and sometimes, Lucky 15s, which to those who don’t know how fortunate they are to be among the uninitiated, are bets involving a number of horses.

Except in the case of Lucky 15s, you must pick more than one winner to get a payout, and though I’ve chosen a few winners, I’ve never had more than one of them on the same docket.

“How’s your luck”, a fellow punter asked me the other day. I gave him the stock answer: “I couldn’t pick the winner of a walk-over,” which wasn’t strictly true since, as I’ve already said, I’ve chosen a few that passed the post in front, but weren’t on the same docket. Which meant I didn’t pick up a return.

All of which shouldn’t have me looking forward with any great anticipation to the highlight of the National Hunt season, the Cheltenham Festival, going ahead the month after next.

But I am, not because I’m holding an ante-post bet on one whose price is contracting by the day, but because the contest between England and this country is going to be more competitive than it’s been for a long time.

Willie Mullins, this country and the world’s greatest-ever National Hunt trainer, cleaned the place out last year, and a number of years before that, as well. And when he hadn’t his name attached to the winner, other trainers from here had.

There would have been lots of British punters who cashed in with their bets, but the racing establishment, and sections of the media, wouldn’t have liked it.

Him and the others coming over here and scooping up all our big prizes, they’d have thought, but mightn’t have said, at least not in public.

Mullins and the other top trainers here, Gordon Elliott, Gavin Cromwell and Henry de Bromhead, will be mounting a huge challenge as usual; but the home guard, headed by Nicky Henderson and Dan Skelton, are gaining in confidence. They feel they have the material, particularly Henderson, if not to reclaim the top spot, but win some of the big races.

And how the local racegoers would welcome it. A hint came at one of the recent big Saturday meetings. One of the main races went to a home trainer, the other to one of Willie Mullins’.

The visiting runner came into the winners’ enclosure to a fairly muted response; but the place erupted when ‘one of our own’ followed the same route.

For me, it has set the scene for mid-March. However, it would help if, in the meantime, the ones I pick to win a Novice ‘Chase, or a Maiden Hurdle at Cartmel, or Perth, or Sedgefield, or, for that matter, a Handicap at Dundalk, could get to the line in front.