IT’S hard to remember a Cheltenham Festival with so many short-priced, well established favourites. Ten of the 28 favourites are below 2/1 at the time of writing with Willie Mullins remarkably responsible for seven of them.

Such a circumstance is a likely product of the new races introduced to the meeting in recent years, diluting the quality from some of the traditional contests by giving trainers extra options for their best horses. For instance, if there was no Marsh Novices’ Chase this year, we could be looking at Envoi Allen v Monkfish in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase.