Jef­fery Ross

'Cue' the trump 'Card' every time-hand­i­cap­per will want to play in the In­ter­na­tion­al Hur­dle over two miles of Chel­tenham to­day. Un­beat­en, un­chal­lenged and to­tal­ly im­pe­ri­ous, this west-coun­try-trained, four-year-old is set to put the rac­ing fam­i­ly Tiz­zard firm­ly on the rac­ing map. To all in­tents and pur­pos­es, this is the pre­lude to a Cham­pi­on Hur­dle tilt over course and dis­tance next March for both Cue Card and se­ri­ous chal­lenger, Meno­rah, game win­ner of a fierce­ly-com­pet­i­tive hand­i­cap on Prest­bury Park last month, not to men­tion, 'new kid-on-the-block' Sil­vini­a­co Con­ti, from Paul Nicholls' yard. For the past few days, it's been all the talk of Na­tion­al Hunt en­thu­si­asts. There's been no ac­tion due to di­a­bol­i­cal, cold weath­er con­di­tions through­out the British Isles.

Now, thanks to an her­culean ef­fort by clerk of the course, Si­mon Claisse and his ded­i­cat­ed (hope­ful­ly well-paid!) staff, the home of jump­ing will be packed to the rafters, with thou­sands just hap­py to get out and pur­sue their win­ter pas­sion. Time for some ac­tion and an eight-race pro­gramme to boot! It will be cold but this tremen­dous clash and a sev­en-race pro­gramme to die for will pro­vide all the warmth need­ed. Cue Card is way su­pe­ri­or, on my TH judged on his breath­tak­ing eight lengths romp over course and dis­tance last month when an­ni­hi­lat­ing strong­ly-fan­cied, Dun­raven Storm, a sta­ble-com­pan­ion of Meno­rah at Philip Hobbs' yard. That 'killed off' the 'Storm!' On­ly a week lat­er Dun­raven Storm turned up for a 'penal­ty-kick' at Hay­dock but failed to score mis­er­ably. He was knack­ered from that pre­vi­ous ef­fort and had, ob­vi­ous­ly, gone through the bar­ri­er which Cue Card ob­vi­ous­ly didn't no­tice.

Dur­ing a long ca­reer, the best hur­dler(s) I've ever seen (and clocked!) are Per­sian War, Bu­la and Istabraq but there's every rea­son to be­lieve Cue Card will prove a wor­thy en­try to the 'Hall Of Fame!' Noth­ing less than em­phat­ic suc­cess will do and that's al­so the case for cur­rent Tri­umph Hur­dle favourite Sam Win­ner, cer­tain to be odds-on for the Tri­umph Hur­dle Tri­al over the min­i­mum dis­tance. The time-com­par­i­son(s) will be fas­ci­nat­ing. Nicholls-trained Sam Win­ner 'broke the clock' when win­ning fif­teen lengths on his hur­dling de­but last month, achiev­ing a mark that wins the 'Tri­umph' nine times out of ten. Pre­sum­ably he'll im­prove for ex­pe­ri­ence and fit­ness. Of course fit­ness will be at a pre­mi­um for the re­sump­tion of jump­ing but such as Nicholls and Hen­der­son can be re­lied up­on to have all fan­cied run­ners fit and ready for se­ri­ous ac­tion. Hen­der­son sad­dles one-time Cham­pi­on Hur­dle hope Za­y­nar for the prest­gious Rel­keel Hur­dle over two and a half miles. What beats him will win and this com­ment al­so ap­plies to dual-bumper win­ner, Za­kee­ta in the weak-look­ing Maid­en Stakes over twelve fur­longs of South­well fi­bre­sand.