A TRIP to Mumbai for the Asian Racing Conference means I missed a chunk of action at a crucial stage of the jumps season and was unable to file a time-analysis column last week.

Hence this extended edition of Time Will Tell, which covers the notable events of the last two weekends of January.

It is possible to follow events from afar in these days of instant communication, of course, and delegates at the conference chatted about Faugheen, Douvan and Un De Sceaux as well as discussing, more formally, the likes of handicapping, illegal betting and the future of racing in mainland China.

Reports from Ireland and Britain provided remarkably little insight into certain aspects of those and other performances.

What were they like on the clock? How reliable is the form likely to prove? Those questions are still valid some time after the event, and this column will attempt to answer them.

SENSATIONAL FAUGHEEN

Although spoilt for choice, the first stop simply has to be Leopardstown on Sunday January 24th.

Faugheen’s 15-length defeat of Arctic Fire in the BHP Insurances Champion Hurdle, with Nichols Canyon – the only horse to have beaten Faugheen previously – a further 13 lengths back in third, looks sensational on paper and is every bit as sensational in terms of time.

Faugheen set out to make it a good test and was more than 30 lengths ahead of where the leader in the opening maiden hurdle had been by halfway.

By the finish, he was around 50 lengths to the good and had run the much more talented rivals who actually opposed him into the ground.

That maiden hurdle was neither strongly run nor especially strong form but there was also a half-decent bumper over the same distance later on the card and Faugheen’s time trounced that, too.

Faugheen’s timefigure comes out at an exceptional 177 - the best by a hurdler by some way in recent times.

Arctic Fire, who had made something of a race of it with Faugheen in the 2015 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, might actually have run one of his better races here but was simply blown away.

It is most unlikely that Faugheen will be beaten at Cheltenham in this sort of form (yes – I am regretting laying him for the Champion after that Punchestown defeat!), and perhaps the only glimmer of hope for his rivals is that racing tends not to be quite that simple.

Whatever, the evidence is that Faugheen is potentially one of the all-time great hurdlers, and you don’t need to have backed him to be excited by that!