Cheltenham: Gordon Elliott has a strong hand for the Champion Hurdle, Archie Watson hoping Stag Horn can deliver in Albert Bartlett

It is eight years since the Cullentra handler first landed the juvenile championship with the great dual Grand National winner Tiger Roll and he doubled his tally with Farclas in 2018.

This year’s two challengers both carry Andrew and Gemma Brown’s Caldwell Construction colours – and both line up with strong claims.

Pied Piper was bred by the Queen and initially trained on the Flat by John Gosden before changing hands in the autumn.

On his hurdling debut at Punchestown, he narrowly defeated the Willie Mullins-trained Vauban before registering a runaway victory in a Triumph Hurdle Trial at Cheltenham in January.

Fil Dor has also locked horns with Vauban already, with the Mullins runner ending his three-race winning streak at last month’s Dublin Racing Festival.

Archie Watson, who is more accustomed to training winners on the Flat, rolls the dice with Stag Horn in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle. The Lambourn handler has a 29 per cent strike-rate over jumps this winter and Stag Horn has won both his starts over hurdles, at Hereford and in Grade Two company at Warwick.

Now he takes on the Irish battalion in the three-mile Grade One with the five-year-old, who is bred to win a Derby, being by Golden Horn out of a Galileo mare.

“It was probably last summer that the idea of hurdling came about,” said Watson. “It became apparent at Pontefract the previous October that he wanted a trip.

“We sent him down to Henrietta Knight’s and she did all the preliminary jumping with him. She loved him. He took to it very naturally, which isn’t particularly usual for a Flat horse going hurdling.”

John O’Connell runs Bardenstown Lad and Mahler Mission, who won the River Don Novices’ Hurdle at Doncaster last time.