Like all champions, the winners matter to Paul Nicholls but losers tend not to be forgotten either.

Last season’s Cheltenham Festival was a memorable one for the champion trainer – he won three of the four major prizes with Kauto Star (Cheltenham Gold Cup), Master Minded (Queen Mother Champion Chase) and Big Buck’s (World Hurdle) but it was the one that got away that will have exercised his mind the most.

Nicholls has always been a trainer of chasers first and foremost as his strike-rate for this season (26% to 22%) in favour of his chasers indicates, but in Celestial Halo he has a horse capable of competing for the top prizes, starting with the Grade Two boylesports.com International Hurdle at Cheltenham on Saturday.

In last season’s Champion Hurdle, Celestial Halo was beaten by just a neck by Punjabi, thus denying Nicholls an unprecedented clean sweep of the Festival’s most glittering prizes. The pair meet again now on the same weight terms but with Celestial Halo having just about everything else in his favour.

Having finished last season with a below-par run behind Solwhit at Aintree, Celestial Halo came back last month to win a Grade Two limited handicap at Wincanton by 10 lengths. By comparison Punjabi has not been seen out since being beaten a short-head –again by Solwhit  – in the Champion Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival last April. He is, according to trainer Nicky Henderson “ a very stuffy horse” and an intended starting point of the “Fighting Fifth” Hurdle at Newcastle last month had to be scrapped because Punjabi was not quite ready for a first run of the season.

Henderson has already gone on record as saying that Punjabi will improve for this run and, with one eye on the Champion Hurdle in March, the trainer is unlikely to be too disappointed if his horse comes up a little short this time, which can be said of the rest of the five runners in the field who are rated at least 15lbs inferior to Celestial Halo by the BHA handicapper.

However, with a strike-rate of 30% for the season, Henderson is not out of the winner’s enclosure for very long these days and should be there again with Zaynar in the Grade Two Unicoin Homes Relkeel Hurdle. Unbeaten in three runs over hurdles as a juvenile, that culminated in the Triumph Hurdle at the Festival, Zaynar picked up this season where he left off by winning a Grade Two hurdle at Ascot last month.

That was his first significant step up in distance beyond two miles and he handled it without any problems and should have no problem doing the same over a field that is unlikely to test him.

The winner of the boylesports.com Gold Cup is unlikely to have anything like such an easy run. The run that Nicholls has enjoyed in the major chases on the last three Saturday’s cannot be easily dismissed and he is three-handed in this with joint-topweight Gwanako and the well-backed pair of  Chapoturgeon and Poquelin.

However, Gwanako has plenty enough weight, and although Chapoturgeon won over course and distance at the Festival, two falls from his last three runs hardly inspires much confidence. There has to be a fair amount of confidence behind Poquelin, who looked like a young horse going places when four and a half lengths second to Tranquil Sea in the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham four weeks ago, and Atouchbetweenacara, who has a big chance but could be his own worst enemy if he fails into his old trait of running too keenly.

Tamarinbleu likes nothing better than to be at the head of the field but, on his day, he has a habit of staying there too. He won this race two years ago, likes a bit of cut in the ground and is carrying just 3lbs more this time than he did when he won in 2007.

He also appears to be coming back to form as evidenced by his first run of the season, in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby in October, when he was beaten just a head by Deep Purple who then went on to frank the form so impressively by winning the Peterborough Chase at Huntingdon on Thursday.

Paul Wheeler