Min looks decent but we'll know where he stands after Cheltenham '“ Mullins

Mullins has won the last three runnings of the four-day Festival’s opening event with Champagne Fever, Vautour and Douvan. Min is a short-priced favourite to continue the sequence.

The five-year-old is unbeaten in two starts at Punchestown since joining the Closutton team from Yannick Fouin in France.

Mullins revealed he had been surprised to hear talk about Min from as far back as last summer, before he had set foot on a racecourse in Ireland.

“When I came into the winner’s enclosure at Galway someone asked me about Min and he was probably out at grass,” he said. “There just seems to have been an onward current of Min, Min, Min from that early stage.

“His reputation is certainly bigger than what he’s done. I hope he’s as good as his reputation, but he has to go and do it yet.

“What he’s done at home wouldn’t lead you to believe he’s that short for a Supreme, but the form lines of his races have worked out. I don’t think he is as good as Douvan and it is hard to think he might be as good as Vautour, even though I hope he is.

“He looks very decent, but we won’t know where he stands until after Cheltenham.”

Mullins has taken out Yorkhill, who will wait for tomorrow’s Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle, but will be triple-handed having also declared Bellshill and Petit Mouchoir.

Gordon Elliott relies on Tombstone, another with a burgeoning reputation. “He’s a very good horse, but he’s not the finished article yet,” said jockey Bryan Cooper. “Next year we’ll really see the best of him.”

North Yorkshire jockey Andrew Thornton is 10 victories short of the 1,000 milestone after Sportsreport prevailed at Plumpton.