JACK Kennedy says it remains too early to know whether he will be fit in time to ride at the Cheltenham Festival, but he is still holding out hope for a return at the meeting after a “positive” appointment with his consultant orthopaedic surgeon on Friday.

A fall from the ill-fated Top Bandit at Naas on January 8th saw Gordon Elliott’s stable jockey fracture his right tibia and fibula - the fifth leg break of his career.

With only a little more than nine weeks between the time of his fall and the start of the Cheltenham Festival on March 14th, Kennedy is pushing hard to get back in time to add to his impressive haul of ten winners at the meeting.

Speaking on Friday afternoon, Kennedy, 23, told The Irish Field: “I had an appointment with Paddy Kenny this morning and he’s happy with my progress of the last couple of weeks. I’ll be back to him again in another two weeks. He sounds positive about how it’s been going so far.

“Hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll be getting a boot on it rather than a cast. I had a castup to my hip before today but now I have a cast below my knee. I can bend my knee now, which is a bit of a relief.”

On his prospects of returning in time for Cheltenham Festival, Kennedy said: “I suppose I have a chance - I haven’t been told ‘no’ yet - but it’s too early to know at this stage. Maybe I’m looking at it from an optimistic point of view and, fingers crossed, it continues to go the right way.”