Cheltenham Festival 2024: news, tips and more on day three – live

Good morning from Cheltenham, where the going is improving ever-so-slightly before the third day of this year’s Festival meeting.

After two days on the Old course, the action switches to the New course for the second half of the meeting and the fresh ground is currently described as soft, albeit with some rain expected during the day.

All ground and courses seem to come alike to Willie Mullins’s horses, of course, and having celebrated his 100th winner at the meeting – an achievement that would have been widely regarded as impossible a quarter of a century ago – he can now turn his attention to the personal record of 10 winners at a single Festival, which he set in 2022.

Mullins does not have quite the same firepower to muster as he did on the first two days, and the shortest-priced members of his Thursday team are Facile Vega and Jade De Grugy, both on offer at around 2-1 for the Turners Novice Chase (1.30pm) and Mares’ Novice Hurdle (4.50pm), respectively.

He has plenty with an each-way chance scattered across the seven races, however, and Ireland should secure the four wins required to lift the Prestbury Cup before the afternoon is out. Gordon Elliott will be hoping to chip in to the total – Betterdaysahead, the favourite for the Mares’ Novice Hurdle, is his best chance to get off the mark for the week – while Rachael Blackmore, one of only three riders to have ridden more than a single winner so far, has a favourite’s chance aboard Envoi Allen in the Ryanair at 2.50pm,

The moment we will all be hoping to see, meanwhile, is the hugely popular Paisley Park ending his career with a second win in the Stayers’ Hurdle. He is a 16-1 shot, but much stranger things have happened here in the past.

In other news this morning, Nicky Henderson’s miserable Festival continues and he has now been forced to rule out Sir Gino, the favourite, from tomorrow’s Triumph Hurdle. Shanagh Bob, who was due to contest the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle on the same card, has also been ruled out

For the moment at least, Henderson has seven runners declared to run over the next couple of days – but only No Ordinary Joe, in tomorrow’s Martin Pipe Conditionals’ Handicap Hurdle, is priced up at less than 25-1.

My picks for the third day are here, and you can, as always, follow all the news, views and action here on the Guardian’s liveblog, and we will be under way on the track at 1.30pm.