This brilliant novice would have hacked up in the Champion Hurdle - he'll be a massive contender for the real thing in 2026

There was plenty to take in from last week's fantastic Cheltenham Festival, so this week I'll focus on the hurdlers before covering the chasers next week.

The Champion Hurdle was expected to produce one of the finest winners of the century, but in the end it delivered arguably one of the weakest.

As Chris Cook pointed out in The Cook Review, fallers in hurdle races at Cheltenham are not common, but they do happen slightly more often than in everyday hurdle races. Since 2020, the faller rate for hurdlers at the festival has been 1.78 per cent, compared to 1.68 per cent for all hurdle races.