Last season's race

• Winner: Salvator Mundi
• Jockey: Paul Townend
• Trainer: W P Mullins
• Owner: Mrs J Donnelly
• Age: 5 Weight: 11st 7lbs
• Starting Price: 7/2
• Season Form Figures: 115
• Previous Best: 1st - Sky Bet Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle (Grade 2), Punchestown (January 2025)

By Paul Jones

This year’s running will be the tenth since it was upgraded to a Grade 1, though Grade 1 penalties were ditched a while back to entice connections of the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and the Irish.

The last four Supreme winners to run here have all been beaten, so we have to go back to Browne’s Gazette way back in 1984 to locate the last horse to complete the Supreme-Top Novices’ Hurdle double. Surprisingly, only seven of the last 20 winners had won a pattern race earlier in the season.

The front four in the market have won 27 of the last 34 runnings, which is to be expected, so of much greater significance is the fact that 14 of the last 26 winners posted a top-six finish in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. As many as five of the last 13 (Darlan, My Tent Or Yours, Josses Hill, Jonbon and Mystical Power) were gaining compensation here for finding just one too good in the traditional Cheltenham Festival curtain-raiser with impressive successes. Buveur D’Air was third in the 2016 Supreme before winning here, and he was subsequently bought by JP McManus before going on to win the Champion Hurdle twice.

Old Park Star is reportedly done for the season after he beat Sober Glory, Mydaddypaddy and Baron Noir to lead home a surprise 1-2-3-4 for the British in this season’s Supreme, though the placed horses could renew rivalry. El Cairos fared best of the Irish in fifth ahead of Too Bossy For Us.

Four of that quintet which went one place better at Aintree were trained by Nicky Henderson as was the 2010 winner, General Miller, and four were owned by McManus who has won this race on seven occasions in total.

Philip Hobbs won three consecutive runnings at the beginning of the century but has lacked the fire power since his Menorah was beaten 16 years ago as the Supreme winner (under a penalty back then) but his Supreme runner-up, Sober Glory, is on target to run here and he may well have won at Cheltenham but for his last-flight mistake.

The EBF Novices’ Hurdle run over 2m1f at Cheltenham in December won by Old Park Star has been the most significant pointer outside of the Supreme. In Contrast, (2002), General Miller (2010), Darlan (2012), Pingshou (2017) and Lalor (2018), had all contested that race four months earlier, with four of them winning both races.

Ex-bumper horses or those to have started off in a point-to-point or over hurdles have won 14 of the last 15 runnings, so that is a trend that has been significant U-turn as horses that started their career on the Flat very much had the upper hand beforehand.

This was a race that the Irish didn’t really attack with just two winners in its first 42 runnings but, with the balance of power seriously in their favour more recently, they have only been a neck away from winning the last six runnings. Belfast Banter and Felix Desjy won the two renewals prior to El Fabiolo just missing out in 2022, and then Inthepocket, Mystical Power and Salvator Mundi continued their run. Irish Rambler in 1977 and Joe Mac in 1999 were their other successes.

Pingshou became the joint-oldest winner at the age of seven in 2017- the fourth of his age to do so. Eight of the last 12 winners were six-year-olds but eight of the previous 10 winners were five-year-olds from just under 50% representation over that period. Four four-year-olds have won with the 6lb age allowance going back to 1979, two of which were trained by Martin Pipe.

A quarter of a century has passed since Fataliste became the previous winner to make all in this race, but Felix Desjy was one of a clutch of hoses to not see another rival in many races at this meeting in 2021.