WILLIE MULLINS will rely solely on his exciting chaser Quel Esprit as the champion trainer pursues a remarkable eighth victory in Sunday’s Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown.
Mullins has been all-dominant on the Irish racing scene this season and after 10 entries were yesterday left in the €160,000 highlight of a prestigious card containing four Grade One contests, his opposition know they will have to take on Mullins in a race he has farmed like no other.
Florida Pearl’s four Hennessy wins were accompanied by Alexander Banquet, Rule Supreme and the ill-fated Kempes last year and a win for Quel Esprit this weekend could earn him a tilt at next month’s Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Some bookmaker reaction yesterday was to install the latest Mullins star as favourite for Sunday despite a less than impressive record of mishaps over fences which includes two falls and a brought down in his six chase starts to date. Paddy Power rate Quel Esprit and Quito De La Roque as 5 to 2 joint-favourites with the British hope Synchronised on 7 to 2.
A decision on Synchronised returning to the course and distance over which he hammered some of the top Irish stayers in December’s Lexus Chase will be taken later in the week.
“The weather is holding things up a bit, but everything is good at the moment and hopefully we should know where we are by Thursday,” JP McManus’s racing manager Frank Berry said yesterday. “We just haven’t been able to get that last bit of work into him because of the snow but he seems in good form.”
Quito De La Roque disappointed connections behind Synchronised in the Lexus but his trainer Colm Murphy is hoping for a better performance at the weekend. “He seems to be well in himself and we are looking forward to it. I don’t know what happened to him the last day – maybe he had a harder race than we thought he had when he won the Nicholson Chase at Down Royal,” he said. “The ground will be fine for him – he has won on everything.”
The going at Leopardstown yesterday was officially “yielding to soft” which shouldn’t be a problem either for last season’s RSA winner Boston’s Angel.
“He worked last week and I was happy with him and the plan is to run at the weekend. He disappointed me at Sandown and before that he came down at an early stage in the Nicholson Chase on his first run of the season. He just wasn’t right, so we had to skip the Lexus Chase, but he is fine again now and we’ll try him with cheek pieces or blinkers on Sunday,” said trainer Jessica Harrington.
The Deloitte Hurdle could provide a valuable line of British novice form ahead of Cheltenham after Nicky Henderson’s decision to supplement Captain Conan into the race. “He worked very well this morning and I spoke to Barry and he said why not give it a go, so the plan is to run,” stated Henderson.
“He is a lovely big horse and he is a real chaser in the making, but there is nothing coming up for him over here so I supplemented him and we’ll see how he gets on.
“We could run him in an ordinary race with a Grade One penalty and not find out a great deal, so we’ll let him take his chance and that will tell where he’ll go for the rest of the season. He is a great big horse and he has already won a Grade One at home, so it will be interesting to see how he fares against some of the best novice hurdlers in Ireland,” he added.
Paddy Power bet: 5-2 Quel Esprit Quito De La Roque, 7-2 Synchronised, 6 Jessie’s Dream, 7 Boston’s Angel, 10 China Rock Magnanimity, 25 Bar.
