Romantics can moan all they want - but Honeysuckle is running in the right race

The Beeb should never have got rid of Grandstand; Sue Barker should still be hosting A Question of Sport; Liverpool should not have sold Sadio Mane; there should not be a fourth day at the Cheltenham Festival; one trainer should not be winning ten races at it; and there should never have been a Mares' Hurdle introduced.

But the world moves on, even when you don’t want it to. We can romanticise all we want about the heady days of One Man stretching his stamina beyond his limit in a Gold Cup because there was no Ryanair and 17 horses taking on Istabraq when he won his first Champion Hurdle because there was nowhere else for them to go, but it would be a futile exchange between us. A waste of my energy writing it and a waste of yours reading it. Things will never go back to the way they were.

That brings me to Honeysuckle and a tweet Matt Chapman sent out on Tuesday morning after news emerged that the queen of Irish racing would not be defending her crown at Cheltenham but would instead be aimed at the Close Brothers Mares' Hurdle.