Mullins bingo: let's help master trainer Willie with his Cheltenham Festival running plans

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Five weeks tomorrow! That's when the Cheltenham Festival is, so it's officially time to buckle down and start forming some opinions about what's going to happen, with just 35 form-studying days before the famous roar.

This seems the right moment for another look at the current list of favourites for the big week, bearing in mind that most of the really important trials have now been run. We do still have some traditionally important fixtures at Newbury, Ascot and Kempton to come but they're bound to be less influential these days, with most festival winners likely to be Irish-trained. Also, we are definitely now at that stage where a hard race (in victory or defeat) would be A Really Bad Thing.

As you'll see, there's a certain amount of Willie Mullins Bingo to be played. Two of his horses are favourite for two races each and you may be pretty certain that decisions as to their targets will be left as late as possible. I'll give you my idea of what the master of Closutton will decide and we can all have a good laugh about it one day.

Anyway, here's the list, with about half the races having new favourites since we looked a month ago:

Tuesday
Ballyburn 2-1 Supreme
Marine Nationale 3-1 Arkle
Chianti Classico 10-1 Ultima
Constitution Hill 1-3 Champion Hurdle
Lossiemouth 4-5 Mares Hurdle
Embassy Gardens 100-30 NH Chase

Wednesday
Ballyburn 3-1 Baring Bingham
Fact To File 7-2 Brown Advisory
Langer Dan 10-1 Coral Cup
El Fabiolo 1-2 Champion Chase
Conflated 7-2 Cross-Country
My Mate Mozzie 8-1 Grand Annual
Jeroboam Machin 5-1 Champion Bumper

Thursday
Fact To File 5-2 Turners
Icare Allen 10-1 Pertemps
Banbridge 11-4 Ryanair
Teahupoo + Irish Point 4-1 Stayers' Hurdle
Jade De Grugy 3-1 Dawn Run

Friday
Sir Gino 10-11 Triumph
Readin Tommy Wrong + High Class Hero 8-1 Albert Bartlett
Galopin Des Champs Evs Gold Cup
Ferns Lock 100-30 Hunter Chase
Dinoblue 5-4 Mares Chase

I've left out five of the handicaps, where the markets still seem pretty immature - the Boodles, the Plate, the Kim Muir, the County and the Martin Pipe. Of the 23 races listed above, Mullins has just over half of all the favourites, as this table shows:

Willie Mullins 12
Gordon Elliott 2
Nicky Henderson 2
Barry Connell 1
Kim Bailey 1
Dan Skelton 1
Gavin Cromwell 1
Emmet Mullins 1
Joseph O'Brien 1
David Christie 1

Which could also be represented this way:

IRE 19
GB 4

France has lost its festival favourite, Theleme having been ruled out of the Stayers' Hurdle a couple of weeks ago. Ireland has been leading Britain by a factor of about five to one in festival favourites all season. Is that where we are these days, with Irish jump racing five times as powerful as the game in Britain? Sheesh.

Those who've survived as favourite since we first looked at these markets in November: Marine Nationale, Constitution Hill, Lossiemouth, Ballyburn (for the Baring Bingham), El Fabiolo, High Class Hero, Galopin Des Champs and Ferns Lock. It's not brilliant that three of the week's biggest races (the Champion Hurdle, the Champion Chase and the Gold Cup) have had the same favourite for months - all three are now getting very short indeed.

On that subject, we now have four odds-on favourites, thanks to impressive recent performances by Lossiemouth and Sir Gino. There's not much even-money left about Galopin Des Champs either and I should think he'll be going odds-on as well in the next few days.

Five is the average for number of odds-on favourites at recent festivals. We wouldn't want any more than that but Dinoblue is heading that way as well and Ballyburn might do so too, once his target is known.

Ballyburn: is favourite for the Supreme and Baring Bingham Novices' Hurdle at the Cheltenham FestivalCredit: Alan Crowhurst

Everyone seems to have got very excited about his chance in the Supreme after his impressive success on Sunday but I don't think that's the way connections are leaning. "He could go out to the 2m4f if we wanted," was almost the first thing Mullins said to Racing TV in the winner's enclosure. "I do think he probably is a better horse over a trip," Patrick Mullins told Sporting Life.

They already had a convincing Supreme favourite in Mystical Power and, unlike Ballyburn, he's never been tested beyond 2m½f. Do you want to try that for the first time at Cheltenham? I'd say not.

So Mystical Power basically has to go for the Supreme while Ballyburn could go for that or the longer Baring Bingham, widely expected to be his target through the winter. I'd say they'll keep Ballyburn to the longer race and hope to win both.

If I'm right about that, Mystical Power is nicely priced at 5s for the Supreme with a couple of firms. But the Mullinses have a whole month to think about this before a decision is required, so there is plenty of risk to be factored in, even before we start fretting about possible injuries.

Fact To File is another Mullins horse with options. Having won at 2m5½f yesterday, I'd expect him to be kept to that sort of trip for the Turners at Cheltenham. Yes, he looks a Gold Cup horse in the making but that doesn't mean you have to try three miles in his novice season. Galopin Des Champs ran in the Turners and would have won, if he hadn't dropped his knitting on the landing side of the final fence.

Grangeclare West, another Mullins horse, would then be the likely favourite for the Brown Advisory, assuming he recovers quickly from being cast in his box on Sunday morning, which was why he didn't run at Leopardstown.

Gaelic Warrior is running out of admirers but he could be a force at Cheltenham if stepped back to two miles for the Arkle. He was too free on Sunday and wouldn't see out the Turners distance if he behaved like that at Cheltenham. Allowed to find cover behind a fast pace in the Arkle, he might not burn through his energy quite so abruptly.

I've got Marine Nationale in an acca, so it's a modest source of comfort to see that he's still favourite for the Arkle but I certainly wouldn't be including him if I was placing that bet now. Whatever explanation you come up with for his weak performance on Saturday, there's not much time for him and Barry Connell to turn things around.

I'm afraid he has to be regarded as one of the weakest festival favourites at this stage and I'm quite interested by 8-1 about Gaelic Warrior. But there must be a fair chance they'll just skip Cheltenham with him, after seeing him hang to the right again on Sunday; there's still Fairyhouse and Punchestown for him.

Five weeks ... Come to think of it, that's a long time to wait for the white smoke to emerge from County Carlow.

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The Front Runner is our unmissable email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, the reigning Racing Writer of the Year, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday. Not a Members' Club Ultimate subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content.