Cheltenham Festival Antepost Tips: Zanndabad to end Martin festival drought

• Promise on first two runs over hurdles

• Ground too testing last time

• Zanndabad is overpriced in the Fred Winter

Potential for significant improvement

Fred Winter Handicap Hurdle: Zanndabad 1pt win 25/1

The market has found the likely candidates for the Fred Winer who are certain to get a run with Tekao and Risk Belle being cases of ex-French trained horses who have caught the eye on their qualifying runs.

However, it's another horse in that category who isn't certain to get a run who appeals at the prices.

Zanndabad started his career in France with Francis-Henri Graffard and showed a good level of ability in eleven starts on the flat.

He finished third in a Listed race at Lyon over 1m4f on his final start for Graffard and was bought for €240,000 by Tony Martin soon after.

He was soon put into action by his new connections at Leopardstown over the Christmas period and made an eyecatching hurdling debut. He was held up out wide early on and he was still towards the back of a tightly-packed field leaving the back straight.

Nudged along after 2 out, he was only given a fairly gentle hands and heels ride while making some late headway to finish seventh.

That was a promising start to Zanndabad's hurdling career and he was well backed for his second start at Naas when sent off at 7/4 but a bad mistake at 4 out cost him his chance.

He was travelling well close up in a share of fourth at the time when he crashed through that hurdle and his nose hit the turf.

That put him on the back foot and while he responded to move back into contention early in the home straight, he could never challenge the front pair and finished fourth.

Zanndabad was well beaten on his third and latest run at Gowran but I think the ground was far more testing than ideal for him that day.

While he ran well on officially heavy ground on the flat in France, the reality is that it was nowhere near that at Vichy or Salon-de-Provence and even the ground at Lyon wasn't anywhere near as testing as the mire at Gowran.

Zanndabad's action suggests he wants decent ground and I think the combination of a quicker surface and a strongly run race could see him in a much better light.

The ability he showed in his first two runs over hurdles suggests that his opening mark could be on the lenient side with that potential improvement to come and he may now start to live up to his price tag.

There is the obvious issue of whether he will get into the race given he's currently 33rd on the list and there's a maximum field of 22 but this is where the non runner money back concession is useful as I think he's the type who could go off a fair bit shorter if he does get a run given his profile.

Some may think that it's 2023 not 2013 when it comes to backing a Tony Martin trained runner in a Cheltenham Festival handicap hurdle but maybe this is the horse to break his drought in such contests stretching back to Ted Veale in that year and any 20/1 or bigger appeals.