‘Huge question marks to answer’ - Cheltenham Festival favourites who can’t be trusted

The nature of horse racing ensures that not every favourite will win, especially at the thoroughly competitive Cheltenham Festival.

Some favourites are more solid than others so we’ve selected some market leaders who still have huge question marks to answer ahead of the Festival in March.

Champion Hurdle

The New Lion heads the market for Day 1’s feature event and there are several reasons for concern. Firstly, the best performance of his career came in last year’s Turners Novices’ Hurdle, which is over 2m5f, and his performances over shorter trips haven’t been as good.

Winning a Grade 2 at Cheltenham last time out, the race fell into his lap after an injury to the favourite midway, and he failed to really impress after that. Champion Hurdle winners should be beating the likes of Nemean Lion much more impressively.

Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase

Final Demand is clinging on to ante-post favouritism for the Brown Advisory, despite flopping badly at the Dublin Racing Festival. It’s very difficult to be confident of a big run at Cheltenham off the back of a very underwhelming display and there are more solid options.

The seven-year-old's only other disappointing display under rules came at Cheltenham last season, where he was well fancied for the Turners. It’s obviously not out of the question that he can bounce back but it might be prudent to hold fire on this favourite.

Turners Novices’ Hurdle

We’ve been here plenty of times with Paul Nicholls horses in recent seasons, with the likes of Bravemansgame and Stage Star and the yard could be experiencing another false dawn with the so far impressive novice hurdler No Drama This End

This horse was well beaten in the Champion Bumper but is unbeaten in three starts over hurdles so far. He had to do it the hard way at Newbury last time out, making all the running himself, but it remains to be seen if he’s quite as good as the Irish novices.

Queen Mother Champion Chase

Majborough looked every inch a champion chaser when bolting up in the Dublin Chase at Leopardstown last weekend. Marine Nationale had no answer to the Willie Mullins-trained gelding but there are still some questions to be answered.

His jumping has really let him down at times and he barely jumped a twig when beaten on seasonal debut at Cork. Jumping poorly again at Leopardstown over Christmas, this problem also cost him the Arkle. With that in mind, there are plenty of risks attached.

Gold Cup

The King George was a pretty informative race but it would be a surprise if Jango Baie, who finished fourth, is going to come out on top in the Gold Cup. It was an odd race and there was only half-a-length separating the first four, but he didn’t settle well.

It was his first start over three miles under rules and his keenness is a major red flag. There’s also a big difference between staying three miles and staying three miles two-and-a-half furlongs at Cheltenham. Settingly early on is key to any horse’s chance.