The bookmakers who rate Paul Nicholls at 1-10 to retain his jumps trainers' championship are probably correct but the nature of this sport means nothing is predictable. Nicholls' enviable string suffered a chastening weekend and David Pipe spoke for every rival trainer when he observed: “They can't all be superstars, or we might as well give up.”

Pipe had just inflicted one of a series of setbacks for the Ditcheat stable, Mr Thriller emphatically vanquishing the short-priced Alfie Sherrin in the Silver Trophy Hurdle at Chepstow. In all, Nicholls had four beaten favourites as he drew a blank on a card he had looked likely to dominate.

Nicholls still ended the weekend with two winners but the perfectionist in him will not easily shrug off the defeats of three eagerly anticipated horses - Alfie Sherrin, Aiteen Thirtythree and Meanus Dandy - by a mortifying total of 100 lengths. Things did not improve yesterday, Shacklesborough flopping on his hurdles debut at Wincanton.

All four are former point-to-pointers, bought on physique more than debatable form. While Alfie Sherrin, already a hurdles winner, was thought simply to have lacked fitness and will doubtless progress, it is possible that the others have been over-hyped.

Nicholls will know that every jumping stable will take heart from his rare stumbles. Pipe, certainly, showed the relief of taking a valuable prize with one of the jewels in a yard more threadbare than in many years. “If he'd got beaten, it might have seemed a very long season,” he said.

Reve De Sivola lost his label as the best maiden hurdler in training with his convincing return in the Persian War Novices and will now be campaigned at high level, possibly starting at Cheltenham next month.

Nick Williams, his trainer, is an enigmatic character, doggedly coy about future plans. Diamond Harry, in the same ownership as Reve De Sivola, is among the most exciting horses for this winter but Williams will not be drawn on his programme - even insofar as whether it will be over hurdles or fences. “Probably within the next month,” is all he would say of a first race.

No such ambiguity over plans for Cappa Bleu. The Cheltenham Foxhunters hero was predictably beaten in an Aintree novice chase yesterday - the trip too short, the track too tight. Door Boy won the race but his jockey, Denis O'Regan, ended the day in hospital with a suspected broken collarbone.

Evan Williams, trainer of Cappa Bleu, is unlikely to be deterred from aiming for the Hennessy at Newbury, nor remotely concerned by the baffling response of one bookmaker in doubling his price for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Cheltenham, as is annually plain, suits some horses much better than others. Monet's Garden, for instance, has been beaten on all five occasions he has run there but his honourable career is amply decorated elsewhere and a heartwarming, front-running success in the Old Roan Chase on Saturday was his fourth win at Aintree. He will now return to another favourite venue, Huntingdon, for the Peterborough Chase.

Dunguib, by contrast, has already shown his liking for Cheltenham with a devastating win in the Festival Bumper and he did not break sweat to win his hurdling debut at Galway yesterday in the style of a future champion. One more for Nicholls to worry about.