Yahoo Sports UK columnist Emma Lavelle: Festival needs girl power

Top trainer Emma Lavelle is Jumps Racing Ambassador for Bet4Causes and columnist for the Racing Plus newspaper. She gave three out of four winners in the Lavelle Lucky 15 on Tuesday and two winners priced 8/1 and 5/1 yesterday.

Today, she takes a look at the third day of the 2016 Cheltenham Festival…

IT is hard to pick holes in the four-day Cheltenham Festival. It epitomises all that is good about Jumps racing. It is the equine equivalent of the Olympics and there is something for everyone.

Or almost everyone.

As it stands, there are 28 races across the four days of the Cheltenham Festival and it is likely that the ground could take a couple of additional races, as it was interesting to hear Cheltenham’s clerk of the course Simon Claisse reiterating that “we don’t actually race on 90% of the ground that is used for the Festival and, as a result, we’ve got so much fresh ground all the way round the inside”.

You can, of course, dilute the quality with too much racing. Until a few years ago, that was even the case at the top end of Jumping, with too many Gold Cup trials and just a handful of top-class horses to run in them.

That appears to have been rectified, yet I still feel we could do a better job at race-planning sometimes.

Take the mares for instance. It was wonderful to see Annie Power storm up the hill in a record time to land the Champion Hurdle on Tuesday. The impressive Vroum Vroum Mag also won for the girls.

And I think there is a strong case to be made for the addition of a two-and-half-mile Championship Hurdle and a Mares’ Chase at the Festival.

We have the Queen Mother Champion Chase over two miles. We have the Gold Cup over three, and we have the Ryanair Chase over two-and-a-half. So why not bridge that gap between the Champion Hurdle and the World Hurdle with a top-class Championship race for the inbetweeners?

Rightfully, the late, great David Nicholson is remembered in the naming of the Mares’ Hurdle, as ‘The Duke’ was a champion for mares’ races – and I want to take up that baton.

There is a strong case to be made for a Mares’ Chase, as it is so important to promote them.

Breeders should not be made to feel it is a complete disaster to have a filly and we have to give owners more opportunities to keep mares in training. It is food for thought and I know that there are plenty of other owners and trainers that feel the same way.

Today’s feature race is the World Hurdle. For me, the best winner was not Big Buck’s or Inglis Drever (who, between them, won it on seven occasions) – it was Baraouda, who scored in 2002 and 2003. He was an unbelievably talented horse, who almost became bored with his superiority.

In my opinion, the only one that could possibly match his quality in the race today is the young pretender, Thistlecrack. (3.30). He really could be a cut above if he brings this season’s form to Cheltenham.

Bristol De Mai (1.30) is my absolute favourite horse in training this season (above), he is stunning, a great jumper and supremely talented, and if handles the better ground, I think he should win the JLT.

It would be impossible to leave out Vautour (2.50) from the Lavelle Lucky 15 now that he has been re-routed to the Ryanair.

Village Vic (4.10) has done nothing but improve all year and could be the answer in the Plate.

We had three out of four winners in our Lavelle Lucky 15 on Tuesday and two Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained winners priced 8/1 and 5/1 yesterday.

Fail of the tape

I’m not sure if we will have any runners on Tuesday, March 29.

If we don’t, that is probably just as well, as all 23 jockeys who took part in Tuesday’s Ultima Handicap Chase, including our own jockey, Brian Hughes, were banned for a day. They had lined up before being instructed to do so.

In what other industry, where you risk life and limb every time you go to work, would you be banned without pay for doing something so trivial?

Rules are rules, but some rules are utterly absurd.

The sooner we get rid of tapes and the whole standing start malarkey, the better.

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