SOME OF US are looking at the stars. So said Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. And other Irishmen who might agree with that include horse trainers called Willie Mullins, Aidan O'Brien and Tom Foley. Subject: the Gold Cup (and any other prize worth plundering) at Cheltenham in March.

Florida Pearl

Sent off 4-7 favourite for the Ericsson Chase at Leopardstown over Christmas, Florida Pearl - the twinkle in Willie's eye - was beaten a neck and Mullins afterwards conceded that the horse had "stood in his box for a month" at some stage before the race.

Then, early in the new year, the Racing Post carried a story, afterwards largely retracted, that Danoli - he's the smile on Tom Foley's face - would run in another Leopardstown cracker, the Hennessy in February, but, ideally, would be pulled up after the first circuit, taking in the race as an exercise gallop.

Both the Florida Pearl defeat and the Danoli thing caused the heckles to rise on the necks of those wet-behind-the-ears folk who have not yet learned that Cheltenham and only Cheltenham is what matters to the Irish. If you're mug enough to bet along the way on Gold Cup contenders - or almost any Festival candidates - then you're asking the bookmakers to take your money. Trial races are just that; and they're a trial more for the punters than for the horses.

Aidan O'Brien

We had more evidence of this when Aidan O'Brien, who still looks like a cherub sent down to teach us ballet dancing rather than the training of horses, saddled his dual Champion Hurdle winner, Istabraq, when - this time not denied - the horse was "half-fit." The difference is that, apart from defeat over too long a distance by Limestone Lad, Istabraq has won his "trial" races with his head in his chest. In fact, you could have put his head in a bag before the best of these, the Irish Champion Hurdle on January 23, and he would still have won. This superior athlete is the real ballet dancer, a Nijinsky of jumps racing.

Stage Affair, one of the season's best novice hurdlers, was the runner-up that day, albeit at a respectful distance, as Limestone Lad this time finished out of the frame and surely booked an alternative ticket to the Stayers' Hurdle instead of a rematch for the two-mile title. On the same day, Florida Pearl gave around three-stone to the neck runner-up in his race, a 19-furlong chase, his first-ever handicap.

The day before Istabraq's pas de deux (or should that be pas de un), the "crunch" English Champion Hurdle Trial - well, that's what the English tabloids called it - was run at Haydock. Trainer Martin Pipe, his jockey Tony McCoy, and a host of professional punters, including Simon "Dodger" McCartney, with his wallet open to the Lancashire weather, were convinced that Far Cry, in only his third hurdle race, would come out of it as Istabraq's only serious rival at the Festival. How could they think that? After all, his rivals included Relkeel, who had beaten him narrowly in the Bula Hurdle, and Dato Star, the winner of 12 out of 17 hurdle races. The answer is that they, and most punters who plunged on Far Cry to 6-4 at one stage, were not only banking on the Martin Pipe and Tony McCoy magic but also thought that here was a case of people with glass horses who shouldn't keep throwing them into trials.