A Willie Mullins fan at Cheltenham© Photo Healy Racing
Sometimes you have to wonder about people: in what universe is 20-1 about Willie Mullins winning all four major races at next year's Cheltenham festival - the Champion Hurdle, Champion Chase, World Hurdle and Gold Cup - any kind of value? But not only are people willing to consider the price, enough of them have apparently played ball that Paddy Power has cut it to 16-1. It's hard not to suspect such punting extravagance deserves everything it gets.
Instead of looking forward a year, cast your mind back twelve months: at that stage Faugheen was going to go novice chasing, a relative plodder in comparison to his stable companion Vautour. If you'd suggested Champion Hurdle to Willie Mullins then, he'd have started backing away, the way you do from someone certifiable.
Dodging Bullets merely looked dodgy and strictly second-division in the two-mile category. As for the World Hurdle hero Cole Harden, it really was Cole Who? Warren Greatrex sounded like someone hanging around with Obelix and Dogmatix. And show me someone claiming this time a year ago they'd predicted a Gold Cup frame of Coneygree, Djakadam and Road To Riches and I'll show you a liar.
Coneygree hadn't even run over fences. Djakadam had shown a bit as a novice but was well down the pecking order. And Road To Riches looked like he'd have trouble winning a decent handicap.
Yet there are people - and maybe it's just a post-festival glow they are desperate to hang on to - that apparently believe themselves capable of calculating what's going to happen in 360 days time within a sport as fluctuating and unpredictable as National Hunt racing.
Except of course they'll argue that they're confining their predictions to the stable of someone who has just redefined the boundaries of festival success. And that is true. What Mullins did last week in saddling a record eight winners was truly remarkable, especially for a trainer who insists that he is very much part of the "away team" at Cheltenham.
Not surprisingly Mullins is promising to try and improve even further in 2016 but Champagne Fever's split lip apart, not a whole pile went wrong for the champion trainer last week, and such trouble-free weeks are by their nature rare. Even Glens Melody stepped up to the mark after Annie Power's fall, which wasn't much good to those placing their faith in four results on the day, never mind a year away.
The bookies got away with it then: the real odds on them getting caught by a Mullins 'big four' clean-sweep in 2016 should be through the roof.
Anyone in any doubt about how unpredictable the festival can be should consider how different the Gold Cup would have been without the variable which was the rain that fell the night before. If it had stayed dry, Coneygree mightn't have even run.
Ante-post can be a dodgy pursuit at the best of times, but betting on all the Mullins stars who looked so good last week actually turning up in a year's time, never mind winning, is the sort of 'juju' that might entitle health & safety merchants to consider tying punters to posts for their own good.
It's remarkable though how different people see things differently.
Vautour emerged last year as the apple in the eyes of Willie Mullins and Ruby Walsh and looks to have managed the same this time after a truly spectacular JLT victory that has him sharing favouritism for next year's Gold Cup with his stable companion Don Poli. They could hardly be more different in terms of running style. Don Poli is so laidback as to seem horizontal sometimes. His stamina credentials seem to be bombproof. Vautour's performance exuded flamboyance and he returned to the winner's enclosure almost as 'buzzy' as when he went out.
Walsh and Mullins believe Gold Cup stamina won't be an issue. If they're right, then the buzz around Vautour is going to be truly electric, although this corner will remain firmly in the Don Poli camp until that's proven.
But a consequence of all this wonderful potential is the Mullins horse that actually proved himself a true champion at Cheltenham, and is still in possession of an unbeaten record, finds himself comparatively overlooked.
Machine puns aside, Faugheen really does look something else again.
His jumping technique can hardly be described as flawless but it seems to make no difference if he kicks one out of the ground occasionally. His error at the second last in the Champion Hurdle would have seriously compromised most horses. Yet within strides, and with the best around breathing down his neck, he was quickly back in control and sprinted into the straight.
The bare form says Arctic Fire is within a length and a half of Faugheen and if there's anyone around who actually believes that's the difference between the two of them, then maybe a padded post might be considered for them too.
The handicapper believes Faugheen put up a performance to rank with the best marks Hurricane Fly and Istabraq put up in their careers. That already puts him in the pantheon. But a combination of visual impression and the promise which automatically comes with an unbeaten record means it's hardly unreasonable to hope there is even better to come.
Since Bryan Cooper is just 22, there is surely better to come from Gigginstown's jockey who wound up with fifteen days worth of whip suspensions from the final day of the festival.
For what it's worth, both the eleven days for the Gold Cup and the four days in the Albert Bartlett looked a little harsh. There was hardly anything x-rated about either.
But sometimes there's no substitute for experience. An older head would have calculated the stewards would have been keeping an especially beady eye in the Gold Cup having handed out the four days in the previous race. And it's hard not to suspect it is human nature for stewards in ban-mode to get tough with someone they don't have to deal with on a daily basis.
An older head too probably wouldn't have gone for an ambitious run up the inside of Milsean in the Albert Bartlett. The colours on both Milsean and No More Heroes might have been the same but Grade 1's at Cheltenham are not renowned for quarters being given or asked.
