Head and Heart go toe to toe in battle for the soul of festival week

The Cheltenham Festival is nearly upon us. Twelve months of anticipation, conjecture and intrigue culminate in the Cotswolds next week, to be started again the following week and so ad infinitum.

By now we have a reasonably fair idea of what to expect – the ground will be good to soft as usual, Ruby Walsh will probably be top jockey, Willie Mullins will still, even after a traumatic season, be top trainer unless Nicky Henderson goes winner-crazy, a few of the Grade 1s look to be practical formalities, the handicaps will almost take on the appearance of level-weights affairs given the vastness of the entry (the words 'running from out of the handicap' should really be included in a glossary of defunct terms) and no-one sensible will give two hoots about the BetBright Cup.

The real duel, the one that rumbles away continuously like the keyboards in Light My Fire, is the one between head and heart. There are no trophies for this, no early odds, no hastily updated scoreboard apart from the notches carved on the brain, on the soul. Sometimes head and heart work in tandem, like two people riding a tandem, arriving at the same destination at the same time to doubly mark the card for Altior, or Neon Wolf, Might Bite and Defi Du Seuil.