In a field packed with pace, Alan King’s hurdler will benefit if the leaders go off too fast in Kelso’s Morebattle Hurdle

The £100,000 bonus on offer if the winner of Morebattle Hurdle at Kelso can follow up in any race at the Cheltenham festival has turned what is already the richest handicap hurdle in Scotland into one of the most interesting and competitive events in the immediate run-up to National Hunt’s showpiece meeting, and several of the sharpest trainers in the business have runners towards the head of the market for Saturday’s renewal.

Foremost among those is Emmet Mullins, who announced himself as one of the shrewdest handlers around – and well in advance of his Grand National success with Noble Yeats in 2022 – when The Shunter took the Morebattle in 2021 and then followed up in the Plate, one of the festival’s most competitive handicap chases, less than a fortnight later.