Paul Nicholls: My Cheltenham Festival novice hurdle entries

Paul provides the latest news on his novice hurdle entries for Cheltenham 2012. With just over a month to go until the festival, he's hoping for improvement from some..

The entries for the Cheltenham Festival novice hurdles were released this week, so I will give you a quick run through those.

Nothing has changed since I gave my update on my Triumph Hurdle horses here on Tuesday after Dildar's victory.

But you will hopefully see Dodging Bullets over hurdles for the first time at Taunton next Thursday. He goes very nicely at home and he showed smart 1m-1m2f form on the Flat in Ireland and the horse he beat in his last outing, Hisaabaat, has done well in decent novice hurdles. He was bred by Frankie Dettori and is owned by Sir Martin Broughton and a few of his friends.

Of my Triumph entries, all bar Dodging Bullets also holds an entry in the Supreme. They are joined by Ted Spread and Prospect Wells in that race.

After disappointing at Sandown last time, we found Prospect Wells to be suffering from a trapped epiglottis and he was operated on a fortnight ago. We had vet Geoff Lane in this morning and he is happy with him; he has been doing two hours on the walker and two trots up the hill each day, but we will start him cantering him next Saturday.

Prospect Wells is also entered in the Neptune, along with Black Thunder, Saint Roque and Salubrious. Taunton winner Black Thunder is being aimed at Ascot on February 18, the novice we won with Poungach (for the same owners) last year.

Despite only finishing fourth at Hereford first time out, Saint Roque is a horse I really like and he has loads of improvement in him. Salubrious showed his true worth (he had sore shins when disappointing in a Cheltenham bumper) when beating subsequent winner Carrigmorna King last time and he heads to the Sydney Banks at Huntingdon on February 23.

Saint Roque is one of my four in the Albert Bartlett. Italian Master will obviously have to improve massively on his Huntingdon debut to run at the Festival, and the improving Deireadh Re could go to Newbury on February 11 and also has the option of running in the Pertemps Final.

My main hope is Rocky Creek, and he will go straight to the race. He showed what I thought he was capable of when winning a Grade 2 at Doncaster last Saturday and hopefully is a horse going places; I really like him.

Paul Nicholls / 3 Feb 2012