3:30 Cheltenham Tips

Heads Up is an exciting Novice and makes plenty of appeal. He blew the cobwebs away when winning on his season debut at Listowel 50 days ago.

You would expect top trainer Paul Nicholls to have some useful youngsters in his yard and his 5yo has to be respected in this £47K Grade 2 novice hurdle. Ex PTP winner and the fact that he’s happy to let him make his hurdle debut in this contest is positive. He ran a decent race in the Champion Bumper race at the festival during March and has ability.

Dan Skelton has been talking up his novice hurdlers, and this is Harry's choice. Second here over 3m at the Showcase meeting, connections were surprised how well he came up the hill considering how keen he'd been. I think the drop in trip will suit, and soft ground should not be a problem. (Winner of a bumper on soft ground at Market Rasen.)

I believe the step up to 2m 5f and the forecast soft ground will be ideal for this gelding out of Shantou. After all, he won his point over 3m, and the sire does well on soft ground. Hopefully, Harry Skelton has picked the wrong one.

This horse is the View Fly in the Ointment and the bottom line is that we don't yet have a clue how high his ceiling is after a 34-length victory last time out. There aren't many horses from that race to have raced since, so it's hard to gauge what he beat. But the time of the race, and a look back at the future ratings of previous winners of the race, would suggest he could be competitive here. He's going to have to improve again because much more is required here, but he simply looks overpriced on all known evidence.