Imperial upset - but no surprise if Mullins and Elliott clean up at the festival

So the Imperial Cup was won by the only Irish-trained runner in the field. Who could possibly have seen that coming? Not many of us, apparently, because Suprise Package was allowed to start at 20-1, despite having been picked by this newspaper's most influential tipster as well as two of the five judges on our Saturday Jury.

Full disclosure, lest you should fear the Review is being smug after the event: I looked hard at Suprise Package specifically because of his status as the sole raider, and also because I rate his trainer Peter Fahey. The form case did not appear terribly strong, so I blew my money on something else. There's no helping some people.

Given that Suprise Package hadn't got within four lengths of a winner in three Irish handicaps, his nine-length victory at Sandown looks like a pretty stark warning about what's coming this week. Of course, the difficulty for punters is that there will be more than one runner from Ireland in each of the Cheltenham handicaps, so the job will be to decide which one of them is going to provoke the British assessor's blushes.