Lack of stars undeniable but still a significant force

The times they are a-changin. Paul Nicholls is one of only two trainers to have landed the Timico Cheltenham Gold Cup, Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Sun Bets Stayers’ Hurdle in the same season. He is a four-time Gold Cup and Stayers’ Hurdle winner and boasts five wins in the Champion Chase.

Yet the champion trainer will be without a runner in the Champion Chase this year, his sole Gold Cup entry Saphir Du Rheu is a 50-1 shot and his two possible runners in the Stayers’ Hurdle, Zarkandar and Old Guard, are a top-price 25-1 and 66-1 respectively.

Paddy Power are odds on at 8-13 that the man who has trained a colossal 40 festival winners draws a blank – for the first time since 2002 – or manages just one festival winner this year.

The same firm make him an outsider at 20-1 to be the leading festival trainer for the seventh time, a title he last won in 2009.

“While Paul is clearly enjoying a fine season and is long odds on to claim the trainers’ title, we still think the yard is in the middle of a transition as he attempts to get the quality of horse up to the former glory days," said Paddy Power spokesman Paul Binfield.

Ladbrokes go 7-4 Nicholls draws a festival blank and 13-8 he has a single winner, with spokeswoman Nicola McGeady describing the atmosphere at Ditcheat as "a little flat" on Tuesday.

“It’s certainly a change to how things used to be," she said. "He hasn’t got the strongest hand this year and today there were no huge stars coming out.”

However, it is easy to draw comparisons to the team he sends into battle this year to the one who performed so admirably 12 months ago.

Similar prices had been offered then and Nicholls made them look foolish as he ended up with three winners and three seconds, a record only bettered by Ireland’s champion trainer Willie Mullins.

Nicholls went on to repel Mullins’ all-out drive for the British trainers’ championship after Cheltenham and his record this season, currently 123 winners from 466 runners, is way ahead of last year when a not-too-shabby 80 victories were on the board.

He has even set his sights on beating his best ever seasonal tally of 155 winners.

However, there can be no arguing that there is a shortage of the quality one instantly associates with Nicholls thanks to the halcyon days of Gold Cup legends Kauto Star and Denman, two-mile chase supremo Master Minded and the tour de force that was staying hurdle King Big Buck’s.

The trainer himself still calls this a “transitional phase” from those heady times, but genuine replacements have unsurprisingly been hard to find since Big Buck’s won the last of his four Stayers' Hurdle crowns in 2012, bringing to an end what was an almost invincible era for the yard.

It remains the most formidable in terms of winners, however, and the way Nicholls has rolled with the punches has been supreme.

Whereas once those four days in March, and in particular the championship races, were his entire season, he now boxes clever to keep hold of a trainers' championship he cherishes and has won in ten of the past 11 seasons.

Since 2013, only Dodging Bullets has won one of Cheltenham's ‘big four’ races for the yard, with the other seven winners in that time all coming in handicap company, which again looks like the stable’s most likely source of winners.

Ditcheat’s shortest price runner outside of the handicaps, for which entries have yet to be made, is Politologue, a general 7-1 chance for the JLT.

He has six in all to choose from in the JLT, which along with three apiece in both the RSA and National Hunt Chase suggests a healthy team of novice chasers, who will no doubt get their fair share of handicap entries at the meeting too.

Punters are reminded Nicholls made it pay for anyone backing his runners blind in the festival handicaps last year, with Diego Du Charmil (13-2), Ibis Du Rheu (14-1) and Solar Impulse (28-1) all scoring.

His runners in the Fred Winter and Martin Pipe should be of particular interest. He has landed the Fred Winter three times since 2010, including the last two runnings, while the Martin Pipe trophy has headed back to Ditcheat twice in the last four seasons.

Nicholls in the championship races over past five years

Nicholls Cheltenham winners over past ten years