A good start is half the battle as they say, but it is still very early days in the 2026 Festival. I think Wednesday is probably the toughest day of this year's festival and I don't have the same ante-post positions either. It does get easier (in my opinion) later in the week so I will be threading carefully again on day two. The importance of being prominent was one of the big clues from day one and I hope all three of my additional selections will be ridden positively. Twenty-two runners (not a typo!!!!) go to post in the Turners Novices' Hurdle, the Grade 1 that opens the card. I haven't checked the stats, but I know it has been a long time since a Grade 1 novice had that field size. The changes to the festival handicaps have certainly helped add depth to these contests, with plenty of these likely to have been taking that route if the old rule of three qualifying runs applied. There are question marks over the Irish novices after the Supreme, but I feel like the b...