IF racing is your passion, this day of days has been a long time coming. We have known for more than a week that it wouldn’t be a large field and that some of the biggest names would not be taking part but at last, we have the chance to find out if the great horse still has what it takes.

Enough, though, of one-time Champ ion Hurdle favourite Harchibald which reappears at Tipperary this afternoon after an absence of 276 days. What about last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe hero, Hurricane Run (Kieren Fallon), which faces seven rivals in a bid to retain his crown as European middle distance champion at 4.35?

The Coolmore team are so confident about Hurricane Run winning again that they have decided to run their star filly Alexandrova in the Prix de l’Opera instead, ostensibly to familiarise the double Oaks winner with the track ahead of a planned assault on the Arc as a four-year-old next term.

Lining up to oppose Fallon are Frankie Dettori, Christophe Soumillon, Christophe Lemaire, Olivier Peslier, Dominique Boeuf and the lesser known Stephane Pasquier, but the big story at Long champ would be victory for Yutaka Take, most recently noted for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on Zenno Rob Roy at York last autumn.

Take rides Japanese superstar Deep Impact in a bid to avenge the defeat by Montjeu of fellow countryman El Condor Pasa under Masayoshi Ebina in 1999, but as with British racegoers’ aversion to French champion Freddie Head when he rode here in the 1970s and 1980s, so the French have taken a dislike to Take riding in France.

He blew the 1994 Arc on White Muzzle when he should have won by the length of the Champs-Elysees and while famous wins have followed, like that of Seeking The Pearl at Deauville in 1997 (the first Japanese horse to win outside Japan), Take’s stock has never really recovered.

However good Deep Impact is, Fallon, Soumillon and Dettori in partic ular will fancy their chances of making sure Take doesn’t break his Arc duck this afternoon. So too will Peslier who has come in for the ride on the least fancied of the three-year-old colts, Best Name. By 4.45, he may well have found himself to have been on the best horse.

tj on Ap’s trail

DESPITE the fact the jumping season for form book and championship purposes now runs from April to April, Saturday’s televised meeting at Chepstow has long been viewed by many as the start of the jumping season “proper”.

Whatever the merits of that argument, the facts state that the meetings at Ludlow and Wetherby got the new British season under way on Sunday, April 30, with the trainer to follow so far being Peter Bowen and the find of the season in jockey terms being a young Irish conditional rider called Tom O’Brien, nephew of trainer Aidan of Ballydoyle fame.

O’Brien was in the unpaid ranks last season, doing well enough to get rides in the three big amateur races at the Cheltenham Festival, finishing ninth for Philip Hobbs on Parsons Legacy, fifth for Mark Pitman on Without A Doubt and a close 10th for Hobbs on Bosham Mill.

Like many Irish riders, O’Brien has chosen to continue being known by his initials and since turning conditional just over a month after Cheltenham, TJ O’Brien hasn’t looked back. When he won on My Good Lord at Sedgefield on Tuesday, the jockey drew level at the top of the table with the great AP McCoy on 49 winners, two ahead of Richard Johnson.

O’Brien’s tally had been achieved from 165 rides as opposed to McCoy’s 195 and his profit to £1 level stakes was +133.00 compared with the champion’s -22.78, a sure sign he’s been winning on a lot of horses which weren’t as strongly fancied as the majority of AP’s rides.

Drawing level with McCoy had taken the eight weeks which the champion had been sidelined for due to a broken wrist but that should not detract from O’Brien’s achievements as none of his fully-fledged weighing-room colleagues had been able to ride enough winners to do so. It’s not quite a title race in the Francome/Scudamore or Dunwoody/ Maguire leagues yet but when McCoy resumed hostilities on Thursday, he immediately went one up on O’Brien by winning on his first ride back, only for TJ to ride a winner three races later to draw level. They were both out of luck in the next before McCoy regained his lead in the last.

Both men were at Fontwell yesterday and both head for Market Rasen today, where TJ looks good for a winner on Mumbles Head in the 3.20, but provided McCoy avoids further injury and retains his enthusiasm for getting up every morning and riding as many winners as daylight will allow, O’Brien will be left trailing.

However, a marker has been laid down and if TJ wins the Conditional Jockeys’ title as expected this season, what price him being the new champion in 2007/08?

The last person to win the two titles back to back was none other than McCoy and the champion might well find himself looking across the changing rooms over the next few weeks and eyeballing his natural successor.