THE decision that the Cooper family and Jessica Harrington made to by-pass the Cheltenham Festival with Our Duke was an incredibly astute decision.

It’s one thing if you are an owner with an abundance of Cheltenham-type horses, if you are going to have plenty of runners at the Festival anyway. It is probably easier in that instance to be patient with one or two of them, to by-pass the Festival with one or two, if it isn’t the thing for them this year.

But to decide to do so with your star horse when you have a relatively small number of horses in training. That’s different.

Our Duke had the ideal profile for the RSA Chase this year, he definitely would have been high in the betting for the race, he probably would have been challenging Might Bite for favouritism. But connections just thought that it might not be the thing for him this year. You can be sure that, in that decision, they were thinking Gold Cup 2018, not RSA Chase 2017.

Billy Cooper said on Monday that he had been thinking that not going to Cheltenham might have been a mistake. It wasn’t Billy.

NEXT SEASON’S CAMPAIGN

They can have some fun now, planning next season’s campaign, keeping Our Duke away from Sizing John unless and until they have to meet, which hopefully they will in March 2018.

You know that horses are fragile animals, but you still have to plan.

Jessica Harrington said that Our Duke could start off next season, please God, in the JNWine.com Chase at Down Royal, and that Sizing John could go to the John Durkan Chase. That all makes sense, Our Duke is a stayer all over, he has never raced at a distance shorter than two and a half miles over obstacles. Sizing John is a pacey horse who gets the Gold Cup trip. He won a Grade 1 novices’ hurdle over two miles and he finished second in an Arkle, he still has two-and-a-half-mile pace.

Then you could go Lexus Chase with Our Duke and King George with Sizing John. Alternatively, if they are still doing the £1 million bonus next season, Sizing John could go for that, go for the Betfair Chase at Haydock in November instead of the John Durkan, before a tilt at the King George.

Then you could go to the Irish Gold Cup with Sizing John if you wanted, go for a repeat win, or you could go straight to the Cheltenham Gold Cup with him after Christmas. And, you could go to the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham at the end of January with Our Duke. He has never raced in Britain, it might be a good idea to give him a feel for it, give him a spin at Cheltenham.

Exciting times.