Ruby Walsh is backing Gordon Elliott’s “spectacular” mare Brighterdaysahead to give Constitution Hill a real run for his money in the Unibet Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham next week.
Constitution Hill is odds-on across the board to regain his title in the Festival’s opening day feature, but in Brighterdaysahead he will face a new and serious rival.
The six-year-old is unbeaten since suffering her sole defeat to date at Cheltenham last season and left last year’s Champion Hurdle hero, the Willie Mullins-trained State Man, trailing in her wake when producing a devastating display at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting.
Walsh, who won two Champion Hurdles on Hurricane Fly and enjoyed further victories aboard Faugheen and Annie Power, believes Brighterdaysahead will be a major player on Tuesday.
“She blew me away in Leopardstown – I was watching it thinking, you’re going too fast, you’re going too fast, you’re going too fast, the whole way,” he said.
“And all of a sudden, they were going too fast for the pacemaker, he falls in a hole going to the third-last, King Of Kingsfield, the next minute the mare picks up, heads to the second-last and away off the bend again.
“You’re thinking ‘she can’t’ and she did and she kept doing it. Take out whatever way you read the race as in were the rest of them sharp enough at the start or why didn’t they follow her, (but) when you just watch what she did, to me that was the best performance I’ve seen over hurdles in Leopardstown in a long, long time. It’s the one hurdle performance this year that you went ‘Jesus’.”
Brighterdaysahead and her pacesetting stablemate King Of Kingsfield dominated from flag-fall at Leopardstown. On whether similar tactics can be replicated at Cheltenham, Walsh added: “No, it’s a more undulating track so it’s whatever way you look at it, how far do you think King Of Kingsfield will bring Brighterdaysahead? How far do you think he needs to bring Brighterdaysahead?
“I think King Of Kingsfield will bring her to the fourth-last in the Champion Hurdle. She’ll take it off him as they rise up on to the top of the hill and it’ll be what the crowd want from there home.
“Nico (de Boinville, on Constitution Hill) will be on their tail, I hope two of Willie’s (State Man and Lossiemouth) are right behind them and it’ll be whoever wins from there.
“But I think you’ll have some running done when you get past her.”
Walsh – speaking as Paddy Power hosted a top panel at ‘The Ultimate Cheltenham 2025 Preview Night’ – made every yard of the running when steering Annie Power to Champion Hurdle glory in 2016 and is expecting Jack Kennedy to employ similarly positive tactics.
He said: “Obviously with the undulations in Cheltenham there are places where you have to up the ante and there are places where you have to slow a little bit, but I know when I went out to ride Annie Power, I was thinking about the way that Dawn Run was ridden.
“She just went flat out from the word go and galloped them into the ground and I was hell-bent on doing that on Annie Power and I think this mare could do the same thing. I just think she’s spectacular.”
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