How many days to Christmas, it is 27-days to Cheltenham & in case you were wondering

Apparently, and I have no way of testing this myself, if you ask Alexa ‘how many days to Christmas 2026’, the answer you receive is ‘there is no Christmas in 2026’, which, if true, suggests there is a secret plan afoot to increase the misery of ordinary life. No Christmas, no King George, no Welsh National or 4-Day Leopardstown Christmas Festival!
If true, which I sincerely doubt, though with Starmer in charge and his allegiance to the W.E.F., nothing surprises me anymore, we really should make a supreme effort to enjoy out sport while we have the liberty to do so. At least the rain gods are due to shutdown the heavenly sprinklers by the weekend, so waterlogging and floods will be less of a problem and by early March racecourses might be able use the phrase ‘good ground’ to describe the going.
There is now only 27-days to the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival and the Racing Post is top-to-toe with reports from the major players, with Willie Mullins taking centre-stage this morning. As always, there are more questions falling from Willie’s lips than from the interviewer, and precious few answers. Galopin Des Champs might have cheek-pieces on in the Gold Cup, though he is not yet committed to that tactic. One thing is certain, though its not set in stone, Paul Townend will stay loyal to Galopin even if Gaelic Warrior runs in the Gold Cup. Willie, though, thought Gaelic Warrior ran a very good trial at the D.R.F. for the Ryanair.
Willie is of the opinion that the Champion Hurdle might not take much winning this year and might let Lossiemouth take her chance, though if she is not brightening his day come March, she might go for the Mares Hurdle, a race that does more harm to the Cheltenham Festival than the local branch of the animal rights mob might want to achieve. He also plans to let Poniros take his chance, though only because there is nowhere else to run him and Willie continues to tinker with the mind and body of Anzadam who he has not, unlike the rest of us, lost faith in.
When the conversation turned to Mighty Park, Willie made comparisons with Faugheen, a tip in itself, I would suggest. Though whether he will run in the Supreme or the Turners is a coin toss at the moment, though if J.P. had not insisted otherwise, Willie would have kept Mighty Park for the Champion Bumper and it rankles with Willie enough that he complains on a regular basis to J.P. that he has robbed him of his best bumper horse. No matter which race Willie chooses for Mighty Park, I would suggest he is going to be the Irish banker for the Festival.
Il Etait Temps will stick to the 2-Mile Champion Chase and partner Majborough. Kappa Jy Pyke is likely to skip Cheltenham and wait for Fairyhouse, though that decision is open to review. King Rasco Grey, a horse I love, will improve more than the two that beat him at the D.R.F. (Looked as ‘big as a mare in foal’ compared to the two that beat him). Love Sign A’Aunou is Closutton’s leading bumper horse and it is touch and go whether Willie will have Nick Rockett ready for the Gold Cup
As far as I could deduce is that the only certainty to come from this tour of Willie’s main hopes for the Cheltenham Festival is that Poniros will run in the Champion Hurdle as there is nowhere else to run him. Willie has high hopes that he will finish fifth.

For anyone who has wondered why there is an ever-increasing list – which will be more easily accessed once the new website is up and running – is that when I started the site, I wanted to prove that with all the languages of the world, all the words in British-language dictionaries alone, and with all the different ways the 26-letters of the alphabet can be arranged, it should be perfectly possible to name a racehorse without resorting to a name previously held by a horse of great renown. I also have a hard-felt dislike of French names, especially those that mix English words with French, and cannot understand why when a horse is imported from France, its name cannot be translated into English, as would any French text printed in British magazines, newspapers or on-line.
I also dislike Arabic names that cannot possibly fall-off an Englishman’s tongue that allows an Arabic-speaking man or woman to understand. Also, and doubtless I am alone in this, someone who has only a passing interest in the flat, and with an all-round failing memory, with so many stallions at stud these days with Arabic names, I cannot differentiate the milers from the sprinters from the middle-distance ones. All those that begin with the letter M and all the others with a perfusion of local case a’s.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, whatever that means, what started as trying to prove a point has morphed into an obsession, an obsession I find as hard to conquer as a junkie addicted to cocaine or the smoker to nicotine. If I were to be psycho-analysed, I think the medical conclusion would be that my obsession is born out of a great desire to name a racehorse myself and the knowledge that this desire has no likelihood of ever being achieved.