“GAME on!”, as our American cousins might put it. And there is every chance that the “game” in question – Apple’s Jade versus Buveur d’Air in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham on Tuesday, March 12th – will live up to expectations in a way that last Sunday night’s American Super Bowl did not.

Apple’s Jade has been shaping for a while as if she is the best hurdler around, but that had been at longer trips. The BHP Insurance Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown last Saturday settled once and for all the question of whether she is as good at two miles: the answer was an emphatic “yes”. She will take on champion hurdler Buveur d’Air in hurdling’s blue riband in a few weeks’ time. Quite right, too: I think she will win.

Apple’s Jade’s best timefigure is similar to Buveur d’Air’s, but a crucial difference is that hers is boosted by a sex allowance, and that she is running those figures now, whereas Buveur d’Air last did when winning the first of his Champion Hurdles, in 2017, and has looked mortal on a few occasions since. Advantage the mare.

Apple’s Jade ran a 168 timefigure – equal to Buveur d’Air’s best – at the weekend, which gets edged up to 169 on account of sectionals. In the process, she beat the last two winners of the Irish Champion – Supasundae and Petit Mouchoir – by 16 lengths and five, plus last year’s Champion Hurdle runner-up Melon by another three-quarters. There was no fluke about the performance whatsoever.

Her time (taken from passing the tape, not from when the tape went up) was a massive 5.2s faster than smart handicapper Off You Go’s in the following race as well as 1.5s faster than smart bumper performer Envoi Allen’s two races later. Both hurdles omitted two flights, due to the sun, but that comparison is still impressive.

Apple’s Jade achieved it by going a good gallop, as the sectionals very much confirm, getting her main rivals in trouble two out, and then finding more and more.

STRONGER

Her finishing speed was 101.0% of her average race speed, and she was never stronger than late on.

Repeat the form, quite probably by repeating the tactics, and it is likely to take one of the great Champion Hurdle performances of all time to lower her colours.

Buveur d’Air has occasionally appeared as if he might be almost that good, though his Fighting Fifth scalping of Samcro does not look as good now as it did then, since when he was outspeeded by Verdana Blue at Kempton on St Stephen’s Day.

BOOSTED

He was in action at Sandown again on Saturday, shortly after Apple’s Jade had strutted her stuff, and beat Vision Des Flos readily enough by two lengths, recording a 145 timefigure that gets boosted to 153 on sectionals. I very much doubt Vision Des Flos would have seen the way that Apple’s Jade went.

Let’s not forget Laurina where the Champion Hurdle is concerned, either, though she does look third best on public form at this stage.

Only one month to go now!