Philip Hobbs believes that leading Champion Hurdle contender Menorah could eclipse the achievements of Rooster Booster.

The trainer led Rooster Booster to success in the 2003 Champion Hurdle and believes that his latest stable star could achieve similar sorts of success after his recent victory in the StanJames.com International Hurdle at Cheltenham.

"Rooster Booster was useless when he was six. He won a bad novices' hurdle at Chepstow and that's all he could do, so there is no comparison between them at all at this age,” Hobbs explained.

"Menorah certainly has the potential to be better, but these horses need to go on improving and he wouldn't be, on all the ratings, as good as Rooster Booster became, but yes, he has the potential to be better."

"I'm really delighted with him.  He's obviously improved from last season when he was a novice and it (International Hurdle) was certainly his best performance to date. He's a horse that is now only in his second season so we hope there is more to come.

"We're not going to run until Cheltenham and we're just starting to up the ante this week.  He'll probably have his first serious gallop again about a month before the Champion Hurdle, so about the middle of February, but we're building up his cantering now.

"He only had a few days very easy after he won anyway but we've been just cantering and we'll build that up until the middle of February and then increase the work from there."