Douvan’s official rating remains unchanged despite his hugely impressive return to action at Cork on Sunday..

However Ireland’s senior National Hunt handicapper appears as excited about Willie Mullins’s outstanding star as everyone else.

“Douvan has the potential to be literally anything,” said Noel O’Brien who nevertheless has kept jump racing’s rising star on the same 169 mark earned as a novice despite a 22-length victory on his return to action at Cork on Sunday.

“He beat a 148 horse in Days Hotel who is very good at his own level but we can’t rate Douvan higher until he meets a sterner test than he got on Sunday. But when he does meet a sterner test then I have no doubt he can go into the high 170’s,” O’Brien added.

The current top-rated steeplechaser in these islands remains the Gold Cup hero Don Cossack on a mark of 176.

However such is the excitement around Douvan’s potential that he remains as low as 7-1 in some ante-post lists for this season’s Gold Cup despite Mullins indicating after his Hilly Way Chase victory at the weekend that the horse will be kept to two miles this season.

Shorter trip

“There is a history of horses like Kicking King and War Of Attrition racing at two miles as novices and going on to win the Gold Cup. But I think if Vautour hadn’t died he would be the main Mullins horse from two and a half miles to the Gold Cup trip this season and no one would be having this conversation.

“We can only go on what we’ve seen so all we say is that Douvan is a brilliant two-miler, a brilliant specimen, and one of the best we’ve seen at two miles. He has excelled at the shorter trip and it looks like they might give him a full season at that and then make a plan,” added O’Brien.

Douvan was cut to short as 4-9 to land the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham this March after his win at Cork which was described by jockey Paul Townend as "awesome."

Visually the performance was spectacular although in bare form terms nothing better than the horse achieved as a novice.

“That rating was exceptional for a novice. To put it in context, Djakadam, who won the Durkan, is 170. That means we calculated Douvan was as good, as a novice, as a horse who has twice finished runner-up in the Gold Cup.

“So he did no more than he was entitled to do on Sunday. The race got a bit messy with fallers at the third last but Douvan had the race won at that stage anyway. He did what he had to do and he did it in style. It was his first time against senior horses and he did it with aplomb,” said O’Brien.

Douvan is set to appear next on the second day of Leopardstown's Christmas festival in the Grade One Paddy Power Cashcard Chase.