PAUL Nicholls is never shy about hiding his opinion on his future stars, but it’s been a long while since we’ve heard him being as bullish as he is about No Drama This End. And we totally understand why, writes Page Fuller.

He was a Grade 2 winner on his hurdling debut at Cheltenham, and then repeated the task at Sandown with a penalty on his back at Sandown last Saturday. It may have only been another Grade 2 contest, but the ease with which he put his rivals to bed demonstrated that this is a Grade 1 horse in waiting for sure.

He galloped powerfully to the line, completing the final furlong more than three quarters of a second faster than any of his rivals. His jumping was also incredibly impressive.

He only lost 2mph on average at his hurdles, which is pretty slick for a novice. To illustrate how that stacks up against genuine Class 1 horses, we compared his speed loss to all of those that we have seen win Class 1 races in our database.

Of the 380 Class 1 races we have jumping data for, less than 20% of them lost less than 2mph. So why does it matter then? Well, his jumping also now rates as 8.0 out of 10 on our Jump Index.

Of the 785 horses that have run in Class 1 races with a pre race Career Index of 7.7 or above, 13% of them were winners. Compare that to the mid, and low rated hurdlers (Those rated 7.1-7.7 or less than 7.1), they only had a winning strike rate of 10% each. He certainly has the recipe for greatness.