Cheltenham opens its doors for the final time before the festival meeting for an eight-race Trials Day card on Saturday, marking the start of a frenetic 15-day period of action during which, according to recent figures as least, trainers will apply the finishing touches to at least half of the runners and about 60% of the winners over the four days in March.

And this year it will do so amid a refreshed sense of optimism, both at the track and in British jumping as a whole, that things are (finally) on the up.

Recent meetings at Cheltenham have attracted record crowds – the New Year’s Day fixture pulled in an astonishing 44,000, more than the second day of last year’s festival – and while it remains to be seen if that translates to a turnaround in festival attendance, there are currently five ante-post favourites for one of the 13 Grade One events stabled in a British yard.

That figure does, admittedly, require a double-count of Paul Nicholls’s recent Challow Hurdle winner, No Drama This End, who heads the betting for both the Turners Novice Hurdle on the Wednesday and the Albert Bartlett 48 hours later, so perhaps it should be four-and-a-half. But that still feels a good deal more positive for the home team than looking down the barrel of a festival pummelling from the Irish from as early as mid-January, which has been a painfully familiar position for much of the last decade.

A resurgent Nicky Henderson, who has endured some tough festivals in recent seasons, is responsible for the other three, all due to run on the festival’s opening day. Old Park Star was a deeply impressive winner at Haydock on Saturday and it will take something special from an Irish-trained runner to shift him from at least a share of favouritism for the Supreme Novice Hurdle. Lulamba is 6-4 for the Arkle Trophy, and Sir Gino is 5-4 for the Champion Hurdle.

Better yet, there is significant cause for British optimism in the betting for the Cheltenham Gold Cup, a race that was last won by a British-trained runner in 2018.

In seven runnings since, the combined might of British jumping – including all-time greats like Henderson and Paul Nicholls, and their obvious successor in Dan Skelton – has struggled to come up with a halfway-credible contender. While 41 of the 84 Gold Cup runners since 2019 been trained in Britain, just six set off at a single-figure price, and the last two renewals have been a wholesale embarrassment for the home side. The three British-trained runners in 2025’s nine-strong field went off at 28-1, 28-1 and 80-1.

As things stand, however, four of the first seven in the Gold Cup betting are trained in Britain, and while Willie Mullins’s Galopin Des Champs, the winner in 2023 and 2024, is a narrow favourite at 6-1, Henderson’s Jango Baie, fourth home in a memorable blanket finish to the King George, is hot on his heels at 7-1. Last year’s winner, Inothewayurthinkin, looks distinctly unconvincing at the same price after two sub-par runs this season, while the King George winner, Ben Pauling’s The Jukebox Man, is 8-1 to give Harry Redknapp the biggest win of his ownership career.

The hulking Haiti Couleurs (14-1), the Welsh National winner under a huge weight in December, has also been committed to the fray by Rebecca Curtis, his trainer, and will attempt to give Wales a first Gold Cup win since Norton’s Coin in 1990. And the splendid Grey Dawning, the Betfair Chase winner in November, will be among the star attractions on Saturday, when he is expected to line up for the Grade Two Cotswold Chase.

You need to be an optimist to be involved with jumping, of course, and there have been moments in the past when it was possible to imagine a turning of the Irish tide, only for subsequent events to show that it’s always the hope that kills you. The home team were 4-3 up after the first day 12 months ago … and 20-8 down three days later. The Dublin Racing festival in two weekends’ time could easily throw up a serious rival for any or all of Britain’s big hopes.

But for the moment at least, the only way is up, and to spice things up further still, Saturday’s Cheltenham card could also see a head-to-head between Sir Gino and Skelton’s The New Lion, the second-favourite for the Champion Hurdle, in the International Hurdle.

Yet another improving Henderson-trained runner, Impose Toi, is among the entries for the Cleeve Hurdle and third-favourite for the Stayers’ in March, and the card’s handicaps too can easily highlight a festival winner, as Jagwar, the subsequent (British-trained) Plate winner, showed 12 months ago.

Will it be a bounce-back Cheltenham for British jumping or is this another false dawn? The next three weekends of relentless action, at Cheltenham, Doncaster, Leopardstown, Newbury, Warwick and more, will put us within touching distance of a definitive answer.