Champion Hurdle Preview: If the formbook doesn't lie, then it looks well worth betting that a slight bending of the truth will see the remarkable Brave Inca successfully defend his crown in today's Smurfit Kappa Champion Hurdle.

Compared to the last number of years, when the opening day festival highlight has turned into something of an Irish benefit, there is a genuine home-trained contender in Detroit City, who advertised his claims to the championship here in December with a length defeat of Hardy Eustace in the Bula.

The 4lb that the 2004 and 2005 champion conceded that day left both camps happy, and Hardy Eustace's subsequent defeat of Brave Inca in the following month's AIG at Leopardstown provides a clear form line that the more literal will gratefully pounce upon.

A bare reading of the form does indeed have Detroit City and Hardy Eustace with a few lengths in hand of the current champ, and even more against the eight other opponents lining up this afternoon.

And yet, the bookmakers are insisting on Brave Inca splitting his two main rivals in the betting. Not for the first time, it looks like the layers are reading between the lines and finding a more realistic truth.

The suspicion that Hardy Eustace was a comparatively under-appreciated champion despite three festival victories was banished with that superb AIG triumph, and he will be a hugely popular winner if he manages to become the only horse besides Comedy Of Errors (1973-75) to regain the crown.

But sentiment shouldn't blind anyone to the question mark that the forecast testing ground conditions put over his chance.

Dessie Hughes has always insisted that good ground is the ideal for this stable star, and whatever about the official "soft" verdict on the AIG going, Conor O'Dwyer afterwards insisted it was some of the best going he had encountered at Leopardstown during his long career.

Initial reports from the track suggest slow going today, with some even using the word "dead" to sum up the conditions.

A worse description could hardly be invented for Hardy Eustace.

In contrast, a glue-pot shouldn't matter at all to Detroit City, but even the Cheltenham equivalent of the Bog of Allen won't prevent many of us wondering about the required speed needed for this race coming from a horse with the stamina to win a Cesarewitch on the flat.

The impressive looking grey also won last year's Triumph, which is a race that usually suits future stayers, and it's that fact rather than it is 22 years since a five-year-old won the Champion that puts many off the main English hope.

In fact, if he didn't represent the impressive Philip Hobbs- Richard Johnson team, successful in 2004 with Rooster Booster, there are plenty who would be willing to lay the young pretender in a big way.

In contrast, Brave Inca brings the Cheltenham cap, T-shirt and every other item of festival garb that identifies him as a specialist around here, and this time also brings the suspicion that his trainer, Colm Murphy, has timed his preparation to perfection again.

Immediate reaction to the horse's AIG defeat was to be disappointed and wonder if all those titanic battles over the years had taken their toll.

What we could well find out today is that to go down by just three lengths was a remarkable effort.

In late-January, Murphy's string were not running with their usual reliability, often travelling well to the critical stages and then dropping away tamely.

But, after an anxious time, Murphy is back in form with two winners from his last six runners. That will be a big factor today.

Another should be the return of Ruby Walsh to the plate. It's hardly coincidence that Brave Inca has never travelled better in a race than when Walsh rode him to win at Christmas.

That was on testing ground, which is not ideal for Brave Inca, but his resolution again makes it less of a drag than it can be for Hardy Eustace.

This time, Tony McCoy is on Straw Bear, but that one's jumping, or indeed form, doesn't look top-class, so if there is a surprise package, it could well be Sublimity or possibly Afsoun.

But yet again, it looks like being Brave Inca to set up the festival for Ireland.

Champion Hurdle:

1 - Brave Inca

2 - Detroit City

3 - Hardy Eustace