The 2026 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle looks very open, but the closer it gets to the Festival, the more unsettling it feels.
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GG Jumps Journal – The Unsettling Supreme
Our comfort blanket is yet to be applied. The Dublin Racing Festival provided it last season when Kopek Des Bordes toyed with his rivals in the Grade 1 Tattersalls Ireland Novice Hurdle, but a nasty surprise may await those expecting its arrival after that contest this season.
Willie Mullins does not train any of the first four in the ante-post betting for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. He does not train clear favourite ,Talk The Talk, for the aforementioned Leopardstown race, possessing just one of the first five in the betting against him. The Jumps Journal poses simply: what is going on? Usually, Mullins has been with our Christmas Day turkey, New Year’s Eve nibbles and even a sprinkling of Punchestown and Fairyhouse hors d’oeuvres by this point.
Sometimes he enjoys leaving us guessing in terms of his participants’ destinations, but rarely does he leave it this late to unleash his next prospective beast. By this I mean, he has plenty of likely winners among his Closutton cohort for the 2026 Cheltenham Festival, but it is in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle where we just expect him to have the favourite. He does not always train the winner, but he can get aboard the hype train and ride it all the way to Prestbury Park even if our journey ends in disappointment.
This year, all hope is quickly becoming futile. To demonstrate how unusual it is that Mullins does not appear poised to unearth a Supreme champion, you have to go back to 2019 for the last time the Cheltenham Festival’s opening contest began without a Mullins-based market leader. Of course, Mullins then won that renewal with Klassical Dream.
Before that victory, Ruby Walsh’s last in the saddle at Cheltenham, 2013s was the previous Supreme in which Mullins did not send out a favourite for the masses to cheer on. He won that year as well, as Champagne Fever denied 15/8 “good thing” My Tent Or Yours, presumably setting in motion a 500-chess move masterplan for JP McManus to hire Harry Cobden earlier this week.
All told, the Mullins dominance that precedes and proceeds the Cheltenham roar has been such that, should events continue as they look likely for the next two months, the 2026 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle will be the first since 2012, a whopping 14 years, in which Mullins trains neither the favourite nor the winner.
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Wed 07 Jan 2026So, who are the contenders to draw us out of this madness?
Starting with his Dublin Racing Festival entries appears the smartest ploy. It was eyecatching that The Reverend was transferred to Mullins after reaching a mark of 102 on the flat for William Haggas in September and he duly won on hurdles debut at Cork at odds of 4/11. That is part and parcel for a Closutton horse though and winning by five lengths in such circumstances will not scream Supreme until a greater task is undertaken.
King Rasko Grey received decent reviews for winning at Limerick in December when the yard were struggling post-Christmas. Elements of that form are working out well, although the runner-up had form of P7 in similar events prior to running him within three lengths.
Maybe the beautifully-bred Davy Crockett is the one, as half-brother Mystical Power was second in this race in 2024? Though he is unbeaten, racecourse evidence suggest plenty of improvement is needed, while that is certainly the case for Le Divin Enfant. Watch this space though, as he was well-regarded pre-Christmas and we know the Mullins order was disheveled at the time.
And what of the rest? Sober was authoritative in the Moscow Flyer at Punchestown, the only appetiser we have been privileged to taste. However, that was a three-runner race in which his jumping needed time to warm up, a liberty he will not be afforded in Cheltenham’s annual mad dash.
The sole livewire is probably Fou De Toi, owned by the recently all-conquering Donnellys and recipient of recent ante-post money because someone under Mullins’ care had to be. He has been seen just once, finishing third in a three-year-old hurdle at Auteuil, but the whispers must be whispering. What if I told you that the runner-up that day has form of P4P since joining Paul Nicholls though? Hmm.
Perhaps the joker up the sleeve is one of last season’s Festival winners in Bambino Fever, beaten on her hurdling debut after making mincemeat of her bumper rivals last year. However, as a mare, she has multiple options at Cheltenham and will have to prove herself after an odds-on overturn.
All told, we are in Willie wilderness, the type of murky, unknown space unexplored for over a decade. He will have contenders in the race no doubt, and we will gobble them up to starting prices they do not deserve. But he surely won’t have the favourite and we may well be dealing with a year in which he fails to train the winner too.
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Wed 17 Dec 2025Tip for the weekend
He has taken time to settle this season, but Dalston Lad, a two-time bumper winner and scorer in his only point-to-point, won well on Boxing Day at Sedgefield to get off the mark and a rating of 121 will surely prove beneath him at some point given his proven quality in other codes. He could provide the Skeltons with some serious ammunition in handicaps for the rest of the season, including in the 2.35 at Haydock on Saturday.