THE Cheltenham Festival is primarily about the here and now, but it is also about the future, and the Triumph Hurdle encompasses both.

In the here and now, Defi Du Seuil proved too good for a field that appears of average strength for the race, and, for the future, he does not have far to go to be a legitimate Champion Hurdle contender in 2018.

His time was fractionally quicker than that recorded by Arctic Fire in the County Hurdle soon after, though the latter carried 12lb more. The resulting timefigures are 154 for Defi Du Seuil and 163 for Arctic Fire, the former being comfortably the best by a juvenile hurdler this season.

Both races were strongly-run – in direct contrast to what has been stated in some other places – but Mega Fortune got harried for the lead in the former while Wakea got ignored in the latter. The respective winners came from five and a half lengths and 22 and a half lengths back at the third-last, which is just over seven furlongs from the finish on the New Course.

While Defi Du Seuil categorically deserves to be regarded as the best juvenile hurdler around, sectionals do suggest that Mega Fortune (148 timefigure) might make more of a race of it in a contest in which he did not have to do quite so much early, perhaps on softer ground. Let’s hope we get to find out.

There was plenty of debate before the Triumph as to which were better out of the Irish-trained and British-trained juveniles. Defi Du Seuil struck for the latter, but the next four home were Irish, which augurs well for the new blood coming into the hurdling division.

Eight-year-old Arctic Fire is older blood now, and it was quite some training performance to get him back to very near to the level he showed when runner-up to Faugheen in the Champion Hurdle here two years before.