Ben Pauling's four to follow: Global Citizen overpriced in Champion Hurdle

Watch what Ben Pauling had to say about his leading lights on Racing TV's The Friday Club.

Ben Pauling enjoyed his most successful season last season, training 36 winners, and is on track to beat that number this season having already recorded 30.

Willoughby Court remains Pauling’s only Cheltenham Festival winner and the death of his stable star in January was a big blow for the Gloucestershire handler.

However, Pauling has an array of talent in his yard. Read what he had to say to Racing TV about four of his leading hopes at this year’s Cheltenham and Aintree Festivals.

This is a horse I like a lot and he only joined the yard in January last year. He wasn’t right when he ran no sort of race in a Grade One at Aintree last season, but he gave me the impression he had unfinished business over hurdles.

He is a free-going horse and he went off too fast in the Christmas Hurdle on Boxing Day. He hung badly that day and David Bass got off him and said he could not steer him for the last mile.

We found some heat in Global Citizen’s hock afterwards, so we medicated that, and he is a different horse again.

At Haydock, he settled in behind early on, but his jumping is so accurate he gains two lengths at each hurdle and found himself in front.

However, by taking a bit of steam out of him in the early part of the race, he relaxed a lot better when he got to the front.

We will be using similar tactics in the Champion Hurdle but hopefully they will go a good pace, so he should be able to sit and wait for longer.

I always thought he could be a horse out of the top drawer. He is now rated 159 and has proved to me he is worth his place in the Champion Hurdle.

I genuinely think he is overpriced if you look at some of his form lines and how Silver Streak, who he beat in the Champion Hurdle trial at Haydock, ran in the Greatwood and International Hurdle.

Global Citizen is the ultimate athlete with a big future and he will be very exciting next season as a novice chaser.

He is a really nice horse who was well touted in the Irish point-to-point market and cost a fair bit because of it.

He travelled beautifully on his British debut at Warwick but did not find a lot and he disappointed, but he was not right afterwards so he had an excuse.

To see him win like he did in a decent race at Leicester on his next start was encouraging.

He has an entry in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, but I would say he is more likely to go to Aintree than Cheltenham at this stage.

He was due to run at Warwick on January 9 and if he’d have won in good style, then we may have looked at running him at Cheltenham, but I do not think we are going to get the opportunity to run him in the next week or so which is why Aintree will be his likely target.

I did not run him in a bumper which is very unusual for me. We jumped in at the deep end on his debut under rules at Newbury where he did everything wrong but still managed to win.

He then won as he liked at Leicester before he went to Haydock and he could not handle the bends which are so tight at Haydock.

Bright Forecast is going to improve enormously for a step up in trip and he is not too dissimilar to Barters Hill.

His next run is likely to be in the Skybet Dovecote Novices Hurdle at Kempton on February 23, but it is doubtful he will run at the Cheltenham Festival as there are doubts, in my mind, that he has not got enough experience. He is another Aintree hopeful.

He won a handicap chase at Cheltenham on Trials Day off a rating of 141 and we always knew there was the potential for him to go up more 4lb and miss out on the handicaps at the Festival.

He is now rated 147 and I think he is a horse who only does as much as he needs to. We are not sure which race he will run in now, but he could run in the Pendil Novices’ Chase at Kempton on February 23 before heading to Aintree.