Jockey Angle with Paddy Flood: "Absolute airplane but jumping still a worry for Cheltenham"

Love Me Tender impressed in a novice hurdle at Naas last week but the manner of the victory left plenty of questions.

Now favourite for the Supreme Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham in March, the Willie Mullins-trained novice was ridden quietly from the back by Paul Townend before making a string of jumping errors, however he still shrugged off his rivals to win by 15 lengths.

Former jockey turned coach, Paddy Flood analyses the race picking out the clumsy, low jumping at the third last, the moment Townend has to take a pull and the one clean jump, where the horse meets it spot on and lands running.

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Paddy Flood's Analysis

I'm going to kick it off with the now favourite for the Supreme Novice Hurdle, Love Me Tender, ridden by Paul Townend and trained by Willie Mullins.

When you ride a horse in a race and he's keen and he still wins, you think, “Okay, that was good.” But I never actually got the feel of whether he was going to take a breather.

You like to feel these things, because once you go up in grade you want to know: is your horse going to take a breather after a mile, or where can you get him to fill his lungs up?

Most horses, once they get to the top end, can't burn the candle at both ends. They have to fill up their lungs and have a little breather at some stage in the race.

Now, at the second, just look at Paul's body language. Paul Townend is a very quiet rider. We know him to be a very quiet rider.

He rarely takes his hands off a horse's neck going to a jump to organise him. But he goes to take this fellow back and doesn't get much of a response, so he pulls him out to give him a little bit of light, expecting the horse maybe to go and wing the hurdle and giving him the option of passing the two in front. But he doesn't.

He goes down and looks like he's afraid of the hurdle. Just watch how high he goes up into the clouds and lands on his back end.

That's what I don't really like: horses landing on their back end. If they do that, you're giving away ground.

They're not actually landing running; they land in a heap. It's like when you see a motorbike jump and it doesn't land right. It just lands and the suspension crumbles.

It's the same thing on a horse. If you don't land running, it's teeth-shattering. He hit the ground hard, you lose all momentum, and you have to regather it again.

Watch the Jockey Angle in Full

This is the third last. Again, I don't like this jump. Bunker Buster has gone well clear. Paul has him well covered up, but there's always been a little bit of space on the inside for him to see his hurdles, so he didn't have to go wide.

But just watch him with this hurdle. He's low and clumsy there again, and he's not giving you any sort of feel.

The last hurdle is actually his best hurdle. Paul gives him a good squeeze, he meets it spot on and lands running. That was his quickest hurdle, though it wasn't by any means a brilliant jump. But it would suggest that he can jump.

He's well able to jump; we've seen it there at the last. But if he goes around in a Supreme and makes two of those mistakes, I would say he can't win a Supreme. Then again, who's to say Willie won't tidy that jumping up?

I wondered if the fact that Paul put him so far back, so asleep, early on meant that the hurdles might have frightened him.

But usually after one or two hurdles horses warm up, get racy and get into it. This fella didn't.

He made all the mistakes all the way around. Probably only one jump in a two-mile race did he jump properly, and that was the last.

But listen, the engine is there. Absolute airplane. When I thought we were getting a little bit worried, turning in, once he got up alongside a horse he cracked home, bridle and all, and he blew these apart by over ten lengths. Not bad horses, mind you, but he will be facing stiffer competition.

He'd want to brush up his jumping for me to back him at 6/1.

Honestly, I wouldn't unless I see him going around Leopardstown winging hurdles. Then I'd say 6/1 is probably decent value. The engine is definitely there, but I'm not too sure on the jumping just yet.