Triumph Hurdle Antepost Tips: Owen's Star Can Claim Prize

Kicking off the final day of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival is the Triumph Hurdle, a race in which the premier juveniles on each side of the Irish Sea collide. Billy Grimshaw thinks the winner will come from the market leaders and makes the case for his fancy here...

I am kicking myself a little as I pen this piece as it is one I have been meaning to write for some time and all the time I have been distracted with other parts of the job, the price of EAST INDIA DOCK has been contracting and now in plenty of places he has even usurped Lulamba as antepost favourite. There'll be plenty who see a preview piece for a race still a few weeks off, notice this humble scribe tipping up the market leader and roll their eyes before closing the tab, but for those of you who stick around (Hi Mum) then allow me to make the case for James Owen notching his first ever Festival winner with this smooth travelling and straight forward son of Golden Horn.

He was a fairly useful flat horse for James Fanshawe, but it is over jumps he has really excelled since switching to James Owen and I love the fact that in his three wins he has been ridden different ways each time, looking impressive as a leader or a tracker, and has experience (and an exemplary performance0 on both good ground and softer conditions. His latest victory by ten lengths over the same C&D as the Triumph on soft was the one in which he really stamped himself as one of the top three Triumph hopes and I am frustrated to have watched all the 9/2, 4/1 and 7/2 ebb away as the Festival approaches, but sometimes that's the way it goes.

His main rival will probably be Lulamba and although I've seen a few crabbing him on the back of the horse he battered Mondo Man flopping next time out, I wouldn't use that horse as a stick to beat him with as he patently has not learned to race properly yet, so judging him as a reliable yardstick would be folly. Lulamba did look a star and Seven Barrows certainly know all about star juveniles with Sir Gino having come through the yard last season, but he is inexperienced and although visually impressive, he was no smoother than East India Dock while the Owen contender clocked a better time.

I am not usually a stopwatch disciple but any arrow added to the bow is useful when attempting to crack the code of a race, and while it would be optimistic to assume Stencil ran to his very best last time out in second behind East India Dock considering he is now favourite for The Boodles and connections are intimating that was always the plan, there must be a chance he was off for his life that day in the hope of winning a valuable prize only to be brushed aside by a really special one.

It was impossible not to be impressed that day and with the clock backing things up, I am much keener to side with the more experienced and straightforward looking contender in the battle of the Brits given the hullabaloo that comes with all the preliminaries on the first race of Gold Cup day. Of course, this is not a two horse race and I am not as dead set against the Irish form as some seem to be.

If they all run to form, which is no guarantee with these four year olds, Hello Neighbour would definitely be my idea of the best of the Irish Raiders and he looks a lovely sort moving forward for Gavin Cromwell in that he always looks the best horse in his race but only does just enough to get the job done. State Man went on a huge streak of Grade 1 wins with a very similar style recently and while I'm not saying this lad will match up to him in terms of longevity and ability, I wouldn't be surprised if he travels well into the race and looks the most likely winner coming towards the final obstacles, but I'd like to think East India Dock and Lulamba will have more upside and star quality and could in the end make it a race between the two up the iconic Cheltenham hill. Hopefully we are on the right side of the debate!