THE Open meeting at Cheltenham is when the season really cranks into top gear, and one of my favourite times of the year.

Most of us jumps jockeys have been on the go all summer and the season is already six months old, but this is when it starts to count now.

Many of the runners over the next three days will be competitive in Festival races in March and, for many trainers, this meeting is the primary target outside the Cheltenham Festival itself.

Fortunately for me, Venetia’s [Williams’] horses are running very well and hopefully there will be some performances to note from the yard.

One of them could be Kapga De Cerisy, who lines up for the big race of the meeting, the Paddy Power Gold Cup today. He ran only once last season, making all to win a decent handicap chase on heavy ground at Sandown by 12 lengths just over a year ago.

Unfortunately he had a little problem after that and hasn’t run since. This is a little step up in class for him, but he’s been going well at home and might just be the dark horse in the race. I see he’s about 25/1 and that looks a good each-way price to me.

I kick off with John Louis in the opening novices’ handicap hurdle. He was a bit disappointing last year, but does look a bit stronger now. That said this is a tough place to start and I’d take a watching brief with him.

Shattered Dream runs in the Murphy Group Handicap Chase. He is a nice big horse, who has joined us from Ireland. He seems uncomplicated and appears to stay and jump well. He is an unknown quantity though and we’ll know a lot more after this,

I am really looking forward to riding Baradari in the StanJames.com Greatwood Hurdle tomorrow. I’ve made no secret that I thought he perhaps should have won the Fred Winter at last season’s Festival, and he ran a very encouraging race to finish third at Ascot a fortnight ago.

I think he’s up to this class and, like Kapga De Cerisy, looks very appealing each-way value at 20/1.

As mentioned earlier, Venetia’s horses are running well now and people put that down to the soft ground, which I think is over-played and not as vital as people make out.

Venetia gets the string to be ready for November, which coincides with soft ground given the British climate. I’d like to think if the winter racing was run on good ground, we’d still have the same amount of winners.

When Venetia’s horses are running well, it makes my job easy.

This is my eighth year with Venetia, and we’ve got better horses each year - the Saturday winners have come thick and fast over the last three seasons. This is testament to getting better quality horses in and we have some great owners, super staff and it’s all coming together.

Finally one for the notebook is Vivaccio, who won at Ludlow on Thursday. It was a professional performance and he jumped exceptionally given it was his first time over fences.

He had one good run at Southwell last year, but otherwise he disappointed over hurdles for no apparent reason.

His homework has been good this season so we were confident he could leave last season behind and show his true form. It was a very taking performance.

Aidan is sponsored by Racing UK (Sky 432), which is offering readers a free one-month trial to the leading horseracing channel, which features full live coverage of over 40 meetings, including The Open and International meetings from Cheltenham. Visit www.racinguk.com/freetrial or call 0845 111 4411 and use promo code/reference RUK1MF.