The 26 entries have whittled down to eight runners for the third leg of the Crystal Cup at Merano tomorrow, and already the battle lines are drawn between the leading contenders in the 12 race challenge.

David Cottin, whose Placenet won the opening race at Waregem a month ago, sends Iceo Madrik, who went down by a head in a class 2 cross country at Craon in June, one of a sequence of narrow defeats at Compiegne since returning from a British campaign for David Pipe.

Josef Vana jnr despatches 3 runners over the Alps from Czechia, including last year’s overall Crystal Cup winner Gap Pierji, a winner of a Grade III chase here in June. He was second in the corresponding race at Merano in 2023.

11 year old Almost Human has been running over hurdles in Italy since his sale into the Vana stable in 2017. Unless he produces an improvement in form over the larger obstacles, he looks overfaced in this company.

A more likely contender is French-bred Laldann, a 3l winner at Merano in August over 5,000m, with Almost Human behind, and also in June, again beating Almost Human.

French cross country supremo Patrice Quinton sends Flavius, a winner of a supporting chase on the Waregem card that featured Placenet’s win in ther Grand Steeplechase de Flandres. Quinton’s runners outside France are select, and the distance from Dragey-Ronthon in Normandy to Merano may tell its own story in terms of his chance.

The field is made up of three others: Imaginaire, from David Satalia, who hasn’t run since a campaign at Pau early in 2023, Piranaya, well-beaten for the Jana Novakova stable at Wroclaw at the start of the month, and the unknown quantity that is Zubiena, from the Ghiotti stable.