Fourth title awaits for hurdle star Big Buck’s

Inglis Drever is the only other horse to have landed the race on three separate occasions, bouncing back from a year out with injury to regain his crown in 2008.

But Big Buck’s has already reached that tally without hardly breaking sweat and will equal a record set by Sir Ken in the 1950s if he wins a 16th-successive race.

Since unseating Sam Thomas in the 2008 Hennessy Gold Cup, the nine-year-old has rattled up wins in this division in quite supreme style, but he is not one for the faint-hearted.

As Inglis Drever did in his pomp, Big Buck’s often hits a flat spot – or races “behind the bridle” as his rider Ruby Walsh describes it. But just when you think he is in trouble, Big Buck’s comes back in his own trademark style, laughing at his opponents as if to say, ‘You didn’t think you had me, did you?’

It does make you wonder what the incredibly classy gelding might have achieved had he taken to the larger obstacles.

Walsh left us in no doubt of his supreme ability when saying after his third success in the Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot in December.

He said: “He’d win an Ascot Gold Cup on the Flat if you ran him in it.

“He’s got such an engine. If he’d been a better jumper he’d have won a Champion Hurdle and a Cheltenham Gold Cup but three miles over hurdles he gets away with it.”

Nicky Henderson’s Oscar Whisky will be a worthy opponent but owner Andy Stewart appears unperturbed. “Big Buck’s clearly sets the standard, and it is a pretty high standard,” he said. It could be the understatement of the 2012 Cheltenham Festival.