Three years ago Gordon Elliott launched another significant title challenge from home ground in Co Meath when he took all three Grade 1s at the Fairyhouse Winter Festival to soar over €400,000 clear of Willie Mullins in the trainers’ championship.

Elliott had gone close to winning the title the season before and bookmakers slashed his odds to go one better, his price trading around the even money mark. The Meath trainer would go on to maintain a sizable advantage over Mullins until the key battleground of Punchestown, where the Closottun troops came good again.

Interestingly, after two years of trailing Elliott for the majority of the campaign, Mullins changed his tact the following season. After the corresponding weekend at Fairyhouse he had already sent out 432 runners and amassed €2,262,875 in prize money which left him over €500,000 clear of Elliott and the bookmakers were barely bothering to price up the championship.

Last year Mullins had sent out 318 runs and though he trailed Elliott after Fairyhouse, he was within touching distance, less than €200,000 away.

This year it seems like Mullins his returned to a more traditional patient approach because he has only had 188 runners so far and when Elliott has been dominating at the likes of Navan and Down Royal in recent weeks, the champion trainer has elected to stay back from the early skirmishes. Only in the last two weeks have we really started to see some of the big guns out of Closutton, notably on Sunday where he sent out three young horses to win impressively.

The decision for Mullins to delay his challenge has allowed Elliott an opportunity and the Meath man has made hay, currently standing over €340,000 ahead of Mullins.

Strong

The trainers title is won and lost at the big festivals and Fairyhouse is a big festival in Elliott’s back yard. It’s no surprise to see he is strong in nearly all areas going into the weekend and you’d bet odds-on, with the current development stage of both teams in mind, it will be the Cullentra squad who come away best again by 4pm this Sunday. But by how much and how significant will it be for the rest of the season?

Elliott has short priced favourites for the Baroneracing.com sponsored Royal Bond Novice Hurdle and Drinmore Novice Chase in the shape of Ballyadam and Envoi Allen. Honeysuckle tops the market for the Hatton’s Grace.

Funnily enough, with regard to the trainers championship race, the race Elliott will want to win most of all will be the Porterstown Handicap Chase, because that is most valuable on the card with €125,000 up for grabs. The prize money for that contest was upgraded due to Irish Grand National’s cancellation this year. Like all staying handicap chases, Elliott has a strong hand, with 11 entries and you wouldn’t at all be surprised if most of them ran.

Elliott is strong elsewhere on the card with the likes of Quilixios in the Grade 3 juvenile hurdle and a potentially very well treated type in Eclair De Beaufeu in the Grade B handicap hurdle. If the Meath man can come away with three of four winners, an entirely plausible situation, this weekend could be key by time Punchestown comes around.

Honeysuckle was box office news going into this Fairyhouse meeting last season and she didn’t disappoint, blasting away from her rivals in the straight for a nine-length Grade 1 win, her second at the course.

Nothing she did thereafter was a step back or sideways on her chart of public affection. Indeed, it was a curve that pointed sharply up. The atmosphere at Leopardstown was electric when she won the Irish Champion Hurdle, where she cruised into the lead only to produce an awkward jump at the last and then pull it out of the fire against Darver Star.

At Cheltenham she came out on top in one the races of the festival, with Blackmore seizing the initiative to get a run up the rail which was key in getting the better of star mare Benie Des Dieux and keeping this truly unique partnership unbeaten.

Blackmore and Honeysuckle are such an easy sell for racing and while it’s a great pity the general public can’t go and see her on Sunday, the hope is that the pair will continue to prolong their reach to a wider audience through the lens of the RTÉ cameras.

And the most exciting thing about the daughter of Sulamani is that even though she is unbeaten, she could be even better this year. She is still only a six-year-old who has run just eight times on the track. She jumped a little to her right in the Irish Champion Hurdle last season but that was her first real test going right handed and she showed at Cheltenham that she had learned from that experience.

At Fairyhouse she is immense - five wins from five runs, two of them Grade 1 victories. Should she begin her season with another Grade 1 win on Sunday, the debate about what her Cheltenham target will be will rage again. Either way, she’ll be front page news again.