'What If'

Here's a hypothetical scenario: forty minutes after the most underwhelming Champion Hurdle of modern times, Honeysuckle wins the Mares Hurdle in a canter. It's hardly an outrageous hypothesis, especially if Benie Des Dieux runs in the Stayers. No doubt the Honeysuckle camp will argue a win's a win. But even they might privately admit the consequence would be a sense of 'What If.'

That doesn't mean I think Honeysuckle is a likely Champion Hurdle winner. For what it's worth I would have similar qualms about her in the race as I did for Apple's Jade a year ago. But if Apple's Jade hadn't lined up it would have been a cop-out. OK she flopped. But disappointment and regret are different things. Leaving Cheltenham with both victory and frustration is a frustrating double.

There's little arguing with the apparent consensus that Honeysuckle is probably better at two and a half miles or that her long-term future is over fences. In a vintage Champion Hurdle year there wouldn't be a decision to be made. Even in an ordinary Champion Hurdle most people's inclination would be towards giving it a miss with such a horse. But this is no ordinary championship.

It's a Champion Hurdle with the 159-rated Epatante at the top of the betting, a speedy flat-track mare who flopped on her sole start around Cheltenham. Epatante's stable companion Pentland Hills is definitely a Triumph Hurdle winner and apparently a dodge-pot. Two other stable companions, Verdana Blue and Call Me Lord, are outsiders but top-rated of the cross-channel entries.

Top-rated of the Irish on home ratings is Sharjah who was 11 lengths behind Honeysuckle in the Irish Champion Hurdle, albeit patently not running up to form. Next of the likely Irish trained Champion Hurdle contenders is Supasunade. He was a place in front of Sharjah at Leopardstown in an encouraging comeback. Supasundae's best from suggests he is also best at two and a half miles.

Obviously Honeysuckle's team are free to run their horse anywhere they like. As always it must be said it's easy to be brave with someone else's horse. In fact the substantive context of all this isn't about Honeysuckle at all. Rather it's how speculation about her festival target is yet another symptom of how diluted championship races are becoming because of the range of other options.

Where Benie Des Dieux goes will perhaps be the most critical piece of a big race jigsaw filled in the weekend before Cheltenham. But Honeysuckle's connections have already suggested they're pretty sure to opt for the Mares event. This is despite the temptation of a Champion Hurdle crown seemingly going a-begging.

The inevitable question will be just how much of a championship race the Champion Hurdle can be if the top horses don't even line up in it because they're able to opt for a supposedly easier alternative.

Honeysuckle is an unbeaten mare with a 158 rating in Ireland that looks open to significant improvement. Maybe that will ultimately be over a longer trip. But while the bare form of her Irish Champion Hurdle victory isn't convincing there was still encouragement to be had from her performance at two miles around Leopardstown's inner course.

She looked totally in command coming to the final flight and would probably have won with authority had she jumped it adequately. Instead Honeysuckle ballooned it and had a fight on her hands. The great thing was she fought it with a vengeance, just the sort of attitude required for the Cheltenham hill.

The experience should benefit her, especially in relation to her jumping, and there's always the crucial 7lbs sex allowance to be added to the pot which in a poor year could prove even more important.

The prospect of Honeysuckle and Rachael Blackmore surging up the Cheltenham hill is one to savour whatever the race. However Cheltenham is designed to be the ultimate test in the ultimate prizes. Much of the season revolves around navigating as easy a route to the festival as possible. But the whole point of Cheltenham is to rule out 'what ifs' which makes its capacity to provide them all the more frustrating.

Onto other matters and tomorrow sees the Grand National weights revealed in Liverpool. All eyes will be on the weight Tiger Roll gets and Michael O'Leary's reaction to it, something outlined in this piece - Racing the biggest loser if Tiger Roll doesn’t line up at Aintree

Separately the High Court is seeing a lot of racing traffic these days which might be argued hardly testifies to a smoothly running machine.

The case of the injunction that prevented The Tartan Spartan from running at Naas on Saturday prompted significant coverage with headlines about the courts blocking a 'dead horse' from running.

Andrew Hughes, the horse's former trainer and manager of Thistle Bloodstock, which up until recently had been The Tartan Spartan's registered owner, won the injunction after saying in an affidavit he understood the horse had been put down after he gave it to someone for that purpose last year.

The next thing he knows about it is on Friday when seeing The Tartan Spartan declared to run for trainer Philip Fenton. How that declaration took place, given reports Hughes still had the horse's passport in his possession, is unclear. But the detail of the story suggests a systemic slipshodness that underlines the need for traceability of each and every thoroughbred throughout their lives.

Currently a change of ownership at the end of a horse's racing career doesn't need to be registered with Horse Racing Ireland. If a horse is retired or exported or employed for another purpose then it doesn't have to be recorded with HRI. Plans are in place to change that. But they've been in place for quite some time and yet a new regulatory regime that includes vital traceability still isn't with us.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board has a major role in any such new regime but it is apparently happy to leave the monitoring of betting trends to its counterparts in the British Horseracing Authority.

Last year it tendered for an outside body to examine betting trends and investigate rule breaches in a four year commercial package estimated at the time to cost €350,000. Last week came confirmation of the BHA getting the gig.

Such outsourcing isn't unusual for sports organisations. Regulating the markets is a major task and the BHA undoubtedly has more resources. Whether handing it over to your nearest neighbour is good in reputational terms, or indeed for morale generally, might be a different matter.

Finally the Met people proved yet again on Sunday morning that for all their machines that go ping, weather forecasting really is just a more technical kind of Juju.

An IHRB text at 8.15 said there would be no more than 10mms of rain before wind and rain would ease mid-morning ahead of Punchestown's card. By 9.23 a new text said the whole thing was off after 27mms of rain got dumped in less than 20 minutes. And people say tipping horses is a game for chancers!