Marlborough’s horse-by-horse guide to the Champion Hurdle

Adagio: Highly consistent performer who has yet to finish out of the first two over hurdles. Upwardly mobile five-year-old who has course form in his favour; each-way player.

Appreciate It: Last year’s runaway Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner who has not been sighted since. Big ask on seasonal debut, but a top-class hurdler from the all-powerful Willie Mullins stable; respected.

Glory And Fortune: Last month’s Betfair Hurdle winner but all told quite an exposed performer whose very best form leaves him with plenty to find in this context.

Not So Sleepy: Dead-heated with the re-opposing Epatante in this season’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle. However, he has come up short in the last two Champion Hurdles and will do well to figure here.

Saint Roi: Has continued to run with credit at the highest level this season and last, but his form looks to have plateaued a touch. Looks set for a further supporting role at best in this company.

Teahupoo: Barely put a foot wrong through his seven starts under rules, winning six of them. However, yet to tackle Grade 1 company and his form leaves him with work to do; place chance at best.

Tommy’s Oscar: Has made giant strides this season, winning his last four starts, most recently in Grade 2 company at Haydock in January. Has a monster task on here and will do well to figure.

Zanahiyr: Not seen to best effect when a beaten favourite in last year’s Triumph Hurdle but has held his form well in open company since. This test could really suit him; each-way player.

Epatante: Consistent mare who, despite winning two Grade 1s this season, has not quite looked the force of old that saw her take this race two years ago. Looks a place chance at best.

Honeysuckle: The darling of the hurdling scene as the winner of all 14 of her starts under rules, including last year’s Champion Hurdle. Very much the one to beat once again.

Marlborough’s tip of the day: Tuesday

The market is currently dominated by the Willie Mullins-trained Gaelic Warrior, but he lines up in a race that has not been particularly kind to Mullins historically speaking, with his 16 runners since the race’s inception in 2005 yielding no winners and just two places. Making much more appeal at the likely prices is THE TIDE TURNS, who took in far-and-away the hottest juvenile race of the season when finishing a good fourth behind Vauban in the Spring Juvenile Hurdle at Leopardstown in February. The Tide Turns qualified for today’s race with an eye-catching run at Gowran Park just 14 days later and, with the ground looking to be in his favour, he can go very close on Tuesday afternoon.

Racing’s Ant and Dec target Champion Hurdle giant-killing

By Marcus Armytage, Racing Correspondent

The way jump racing has gone – the big yards now training on an industrial scale, the largest with in excess of 200 horses – giant-killing at Cheltenham is becoming a less common occurrence with three or four stables increasingly likely to share 20 of the 28 races up for grabs this week.

But, when it does happen, it is all the sweeter and tomorrow no horse will carry more goodwill in that mission than Tommy’s Oscar, trained by Ann Hamilton, a permit-holder from Northumberland, and owned by her husband Ian, in the Unibet Champion Hurdle.

The Hamiltons, both in their seventies, met in the hunting field, married 42 years ago, and own and train half a dozen horses under a permit (restricting the ownership of the horses to family members) on their 500-acre hill farm near Hexham alongside 1,000 sheep and 300 cattle. With a twinkle in their eyes and a lovely gentle sense of Geordie humour, they could be racing’s answer to Ant and Dec.

Their strike-rate for this season is a phenomenal 43 per cent, with 12 wins from 28 runs. That is not a one-off – their strike-rate last season was one winner to every three runners.

For much of the intervening period between Tommy’s Oscar winning the Champion Hurdle Trial at Haydock in January until last week when they committed to the Champion, they had been trying to talk themselves out of it – as much as anything because of the logistics of bringing in friends to look after the animals if they go away.

‘They’ve all got a chance, haven’t they?’

“I was keener than Ann on the Morebattle Hurdle [at Kelso last weekend] because it was just up the road and worth £100,000, isn’t it?” explains Ian, who will be at the wheel of the horsebox today on the way to the Cotswolds.

“Brian [Hughes, jockey] and all the big trainers said: ‘You’ve got to go [to Cheltenham]. You’ve got the opportunity to go. You can’t miss it.’ So we took their advice and we’re going.

“We were going, weren’t going, were going,” chips in Ann. “Ian asked everyone their advice but he’s been persuaded to go. I know it’s out of our league but if we don’t go we’ll never know, will we? It’s daunting.”

“It’s just a horse race, isn’t it” adds Ian, applying some solid farmers’ logic to it. “The best horse wins it – whether it’s Willie Mullins’, Nicky Henderson’s or Ann Hamilton’s. They’ve all got a chance, haven’t they?”

Tommy’s Oscar will be only their second runner at the festival and their first experience did as much to dissuade them from this trip as anything. “We went with Runswick Royal, Nuts Well’s half-brother, years ago,” recalls Ian. “

We thought we had a right chance in the County Hurdle. He was in contention halfway round until a horse jumped into the back of him, and Brian had to pull him up. And Ann is saying, ‘I am never coming back here again ever in my life.’ And now she wants to go.”

“I meant it,” says Ann. “But here I am.”

The Hamiltons have had a permit for some 35 years. Originally they trained pointers for Ann’s dad and rode them. At the turn of the century they decided to take it a little more seriously, buying cast-offs from Howard Johnson’s yard.

Though it is down to team work, a new “carpet” gallop and the two girls who ride out for them, Ian likes to put some of the success down to their spring-fed water supply.

“It might be a fallacy but I’m sure it’s more healthy than the mains water,” he explains. “If you put it in your whisky it goes white, doesn’t it Ann, mains water?”

They are no strangers to success on the big stage. They won the Aintree Foxhunters’ in 2003 with the homebred Divet Hill but did not appreciate it as much as they would have liked. “We were in the middle of lambing and calving, we were pretty hassled,” recalls Ann.

“I went down in an old cattle lorry and it wasn’t long after the bomb scare,” says Ian. “The police stopped us and said, ‘where do you think you’re going with that old wagon?’ We said we’d got a horse for the races and he put a dog in the back with the horse, a sniffer dog. He couldn’t believe we had a horse in there, you see. I wish I’d seen him afterwards so I could have told him what happened [the result].

“After that we sort of changed the farming system to suit the horses, really. Spring coincides with the better races, and trying to get away when you’re lambing is impossible, so we buy in store lambs now. We’ve had some offers to train some good horses for other people but Ann always says she has one twisty owner, she doesn’t need more than me.”