Incidentally, on the whole sliced bread thing, there have been many good things since sliced bread – the internet and Sinndar in the Irish Derby to name but two, and I’m not sure that the telex didn’t come along after they managed to split the bread – and surely one of them was a better thing than Peter Lyons’s finest. I’m not even fully convinced that the sliced pan is that good a thing. Give me a batch loaf that you can get a knife at and cut as thick as you like before smothering it with a couple of lumps of butter and a spoonful of raspberry jam any day.

Anyway, Long Run. They have been talking about this fellow long before he made the journey from Guy Macaire’s yard in Les Mathes to Nicky Henderson’s in Seven Barrows. And even if you hadn’t been speaking to someone who knew someone who worked at the yard, or whose boyfriend rode the horse, you would have known that he was good long before he made his British debut in the Feltham Chase at Kempton on St Stephen’s Day.

Over-hyped? I don’t think so actually. This is a horse who won a Grade 2 and a Grade 1 hurdle, a Listed Chase, a Grade 2 Chase and the Grade 1 Prix Maurice Gillois Grand Steeple-Chase (that’s easy for you to say) at Auteuil before he even considered emigrating, and he is still only five. Add now the Feltham Chase over three miles and the Grade 2 Kingmaker Chase over two miles at Warwick. He has won 10 of his 14 races, he has only once been out of the first two and he has never been out of the first three. Nicky Henderson says that he and Punchestowns are the two best steeplechasers that he has ever had. (Better than Remittance Man, Nicky?) Ref above, he is still only five.

He could be a superstar, but 2/1 about him for the RSA Chase, the Sun Alliance? Not so sure. He has a mountain to overcome. Young horses find this race tough. Maybe the French are re-writing the stats books, maybe a five-year-old French-bred of 2010 is not the same horse as a five-year-old Irish-bred of 1990 or 2000, but he is still a maturing horse. Only two six-year-olds and one five-year-old have won this race since 1978, and many very good ones have tried, including One Man, Wayward Lad, Righthand Man and Little Owl. What A Friend and Carruthers were well-fancied and well-backed six-year-olds last year, and both of them came up well short.

Star De Mohaison did win the Sun Alliance Chase as a five-year-old in 2006, but that was back in the good old days when five-year-olds received 10lb from their elders. These days, under the new weight-for-age stipulations, and because Cheltenham is a little later this year than usual, Long Run only gets 1lb. He is as good as off level weights with his elders. Also, before Star De Mohaison, you have to go back to 1950 for the previous five-year-old winner.

There has been much comment about Sam Waley-Cohen in recent days. I don’t consider the jockey as big a negative as a lot of people seem to, he may not be as stylish as Ruby Walsh or Barry Geraghty or Davy Russell, but he appears to be a good horseman, and he has ridden big winners at Cheltenham and at Aintree. However, he doesn’t ride as often as his rivals do, he does lack experience especially for a big day, and they don’t get much bigger than this. He has had just 15 rides on the racecourse since last April, he has had just one ride this month so far. He rode one winner in December (Long Run), no winners in January, one winner in February (Long Run) and no winners so far in March. Were it not for Long Run, he would be winnerless since last October. Also, the fact remains that, if this were not a Grade 1 race, he would be able to claim 5lb. That, on top of the new weight-for-age regime, means that Long Run has to find a stone more than Star De Mohaison had to, against vastly superior rivals than Star De Mohaison faced.

On top of all of that, Feltham winners have a desperate record in the Sun Alliance, even though you would think that the horse that wins the Grade 1 three-mile novices’ chase at Christmas should be a leading contender for the Cheltenham contest. They have been, but none of them have won. (Back to the Weatherbys Betting Guide.) All 16 Feltham winners who ran in the Sun Alliance Chase were beaten.

Following on from that, we don’t know how Long Run will handle Cheltenham’s undulations. Auteuil, where he has been so prolific, is a flat track, Kempton is a flat track, Warwick has a hill or two, but not where the fences are, and they are nothing like Cheltenham’s hills. That’s it. He has only run at three tracks in his life. He will face a wholly different task to anything he has faced before on Wednesday, and he showed a tendency to be a bit guessy at his fences at Kempton and Warwick, even on flat tracks. He may well be up to it, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him make up into a top class staying chaser in the (ahem) long run, but at no better than 5/2 for next Wednesday’s race, on the evidence that we have to date, he is not for me.

* For more of Donn’s thoughts, visit www.donnmcclean.com.