He must forge a new partnership with the champion jockey on the grandest of stages, however, after regular rider Paul Carberry was forced to miss the Festival after sustaining an injury.

Meade said: “Everything’s fine. He travelled well and he’s in good shape. He’s done everything we wanted to do with him.

“Everything has gone according to plan, we’ve not missed anything with him, except Paul’s (Carberry) missing.

“We do have a good deputy in Tony McCoy, but we haven’t got the regular jockey just the same.”

And of the dangers, Meade remarked: “I have a healthy respect for Edward O’Grady’s horse (Catch Me).”

That rival was still very much in contention when unseating at the penultimate obstacle when the pair met at Leopardstown last month.

O’Grady was encouraged by the way Catch Me was travelling up to that point and believes it would have been hard to call the winner if both had stood up.

“It depends which camp you’re in as both horses were going very well at the time and I wouldn’t like to say who would have won,” he said.

“Only God has the answers to what would have happened. I only know that each horse was going equally as well and you just couldn’t tell.

“We were only going to consider the two-mile race (Supreme Novices’) for him if the ground was really heavy. I think he will be a better horse over further.

“He ran in the German St Leger over a mile and six and won over two miles, so we trained him like a bumper horse when we first got him.

“He is a horse that stays well so this was the natural race for him,” he told Racing UK.

“I think he’ll be the best novice hurdler I’ll be running all week.”

Among the English hopes for the two-mile-five-furlong opener is the Paul Nicholls-trained Silverburn.

Winner of the Tolworth Hurdle, Nicholls elected to step him up in trip rather than tackle the Supreme.

“He’s done nothing wrong and the trip will suit,” he told Teletext. “We are hoping for a very good run.”