What comes around goes around - it's just a matter of when for the Brits

After the third race on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival, it was time to relax. Despite all the build-up chatter of Irish domination, which was supposedly going to make an entire winter of British form completely irrelevant, the home team was leading by two wins to one and had just dominated the Ultima Handicap Chase, in which sixth place was the best that could be achieved by any of the raiders.

So much for all those tremulous fears that some Irish runners were a mile ahead of their ratings. Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, who are ya?

Then Honeysuckle wiped the floor with Epatante, the visitors won the next nine festival races and it turned out that British jump racing really did have something to worry about. The final score, as you may possibly recall, was 23 to five.