Hurricane Fly Dominates Champion Hurdle Market Part 1

There are still a very competitive 34 runners in the mix for the 2013 Stan James Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy at the Cheltenham Festival. Unsurprisingly, it looks like the high-quality 2m hurdler Hurricane Fly is the one to beat once again as he’ll be looking to go undefeated this season with four victories on the bounce since his November debut at Punchestown. 

Campaigned exclusively at grade 1 level since scoring a Grade 3 back in 2008 at Auteil, the former Saint Cloude listed winner is being floated by most major bookmakers at a price hovering around 6/4 ante post now that we’re about three weeks out from the kick off of festival time. 

This is one of the first really big races of the meeting and will likely cap the first day’s action. There are quite a few challengers in the mix here as this has always been a competitive division. Hurricane Fly could only muster up a third place finish last year behind Rock On Ruby but he had only really been given one outing that season prior to that - capturing a race at Leopardstown against a mere 5 challengers. He followed up the Cheltenham disappointment by winning the Grade 1 Rabobank Champion Hurdle against a field of four. 

Most of his runs this year have come against fairly small and somewhat limited fields in Ireland. His debut score this year was a fairly underwhelming race where he finished 12 lengths ahead of Captain Cee Bee. Hurricane Fly is a talented hurdler but seems to flourish a bit more against smaller fields. 

Rock On Ruby does return to attempt to go back to back in this race and he is definitely getting some consideration with bookmakers floating him around 6/1. this puts him alongside the likes of Zarkandar and Gradouet, who both sit around the 11/2-6/1