The key formlines you cannot overlook at next week's Cheltenham Festival - including 'the best form horse in Ireland'

It is usually around this time, the week before the start of the meeting, that Cheltenham Festival overload might start to kick in. The sheer volume of opinions, murmurs, theories and stats thrown out will disorientate those who try to keep up. 

Unhelpfully, the moments of greatest clarity tend to come only after the Gold Cup winner is back in their stable. Which races were key to this year's festival? Wasn't that race at Bangor or Ballinrobe a massive indicator, right in front of our noses?

The hotlist's job as part of the Form Hacker column has always been to identify these sorts of races ahead of the fact. At just the point where your Cheltenham study might be reaching saturation point, the aim of this week's piece is to shut out the noise and focus solely on the races that matter next week.