THE old adage ‘you can’t have too much of a good thing’ is starting to ring hollow at the annual Cheltenham National Hunt Festival due to Ireland’s continued dominance of the sport’s most prestigious meeting.

Nobody wants a return to the barren days of 1989 when the Irish raiding party to the Cotswolds returned emptyhanded; or the following year when only Trapper John in the Stayers’ Hurdle prevented another whitewash, but the pendulum of power has swung too much the other way, especially over the past five years.

Irish-trained horses have monopolised the festival to such an extent that we have almost become blasé about this unprecedented level of success. In 2021, for instance, only five of the 28 races went to UK stables, while the home challenge has fared only slightly better in the meetings since.

But there are tentative signs that the hosts may offer stiffer resistance next week. Nicky Henderson, whose yard was hit with an untimely bug which led to a string of non-runners 12 months ago, is back firing in the winners again and currently supplies three – it would have been four only for Sir Gino’s foot infection – of the big-race market leaders.

The unbeaten eight-year-old Constitution Hill – whose trials and tribulations over the past year must have tested Henderson’s patience – Lumpala in the Triumph Hurdle, and Jonbon in the Champion Chase, give the veteran handler a strong hand in trying to rekindle past festival glories.

It’s probably tilting at windmills to predict that all of Henderson’s hotpots will triumph, especially as the Willie Mullins stable is preparing to unleash his latest battalion of jumping stars on Cheltenham, but it does raise prospects of the Irish not having things completely their own way.

Mullins’ shadow has hung over the festival since first claiming the leading trainer’s award in 2011. In the interim, only Henderson (2012) and Gordon Elliott (2017 and ‘18) have interrupted his stranglehold on the four-day Olympics of the sport.

In 2024 Mullins took his festival haul to a staggering 103 winners during a magnificent campaign which saw him become the first Irish handler to be crowned UK champion jumps trainer in 70 years. And there is nothing to suggest over recent months that the County Carlow operation will be any less formidable next week.

If anything, Mullins has assembled his numerically strongest festival team ever as evidenced by his huge entry in some of the novice races. He had 10 of the initial 32 contenders for the Brown Advisory Chase; a whopping 28 of the 79 entries for the Turners Novices’ Hurdle; and 22 of the 64 original challengers for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

A measure of Ireland’s long-standing champion trainer’s domestic dominance was illustrated in advance of the recent Dublin Racing Festival. Mullins was quoted at skimpy odds of 7/2 to repeat the previous year’s clean sweep of the meeting’s eight Grade Ones.

In the end, he had to settle for six top-level triumphs, but there was a wow factor with some of those victories, not least the latest big-race success of Gallopin Des Champs which will be bidding to become the first Irish horse since Arkle in the mid-sixties to complete a Cheltenham Gold Cup hat-trick on the closing day of the festival.

Pictured: Main danger: Corbetts Cross cruises to victory in the National Hunt Chase at Cheltenham last March and jockey Paul Townend and Galopin Des Champs landing the Gold Cup for the second time at last year’s Cheltenham National Hunt Festival.