Cheltenham should be the best taking on the best - but you won't be able to swing a cat next week without hitting an odds-on shot

In this space a fortnight ago, you might have read the latest chapter in a long-running series lamenting how a jumps scene in decline is epitomised by the extent to which a bloated Cheltenham Festival programme has essentially devoured itself. 

Sadly, that theory has only gained legs in the interim and was further borne out by Constitution Hill’s exit from the picture on Monday. His team has undoubtedly endured some misfortune along the way but his fate demonstrates fairly irrefutably the folly of plotting a marquee horse’s season so intently around one race. It is a policy that exacts too high a cost on the jumps campaign as a whole and all we can do now is hope he makes a swift recovery so his season can be salvaged with outings at Aintree and Punchestown.  

The rush to anoint good horses as greats has always been a bugbear of mine, one that in recent years has seen the likes of Samcro and Douvan prematurely spoken of in such categorical terms. Between them they won a solitary Grade 1 in open company. I remember one wag likening Douvan to Arkle, and you wouldn't have to listen too hard even more lately to hear this sort of guff about Ballyburn and even Gaelic Warrior. It's the same every year.