Galopin Des Champs will lead a large Willie Mullins-trained squad into the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) as the champion trainer looks to have a numerical stranglehold on this weekend’s Leopardstown action.
On the back of Tuesday’s latest acceptance stage, Mullins is responsible for almost half of the entries in the eight Grade One races up for grabs. Having made 60 entries overall, he has 27 per cent of all horses remaining in the 15 DRF races.
It is a big show of strength by Mullins, who won nine races at last year’s DRF, including all eight top-flight contests.
Galopin Des Champs is one of six left in by the sport’s dominant figure in Saturday’s €250,000 Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup. Unbeaten in half a dozen starts over fences at the Foxrock track, the big threat to Galopin once again looks likely to be his stable companion Fact To File.
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If anything, Mullins’s big race dominance appears likely to be even greater in Sunday’s Irish Champion Hurdle as Gordon Elliott’s star mare Brighterdaysahead doesn’t feature among the six entries left in the €200,000 feature.
Her 30-length rout at the track over Christmas had prompted hopes of a mouthwatering clash with Mullins’s top mare Lossiemouth this weekend. Instead, the latter tops a Mullins quartet that also includes State Man, winner of the race for the last two years.
Elliott confirmed Brighterdaysahead will go straight to Cheltenham, although no decision has been made about whether she lines up in the Champion Hurdle there or the Mares' race.
“We’ll be leaving the decision until the last minute, and we’ll be going to whatever the right race is for the mare — we’ll just make that decision closer to the time,” he said.
Leading two-miler Gaelic Warrior tops the list of potential starters in Sunday’s Ladbrokes Dublin Chase, while Kopek Des Bordes leads seven Mullins hopefuls among a dozen left in the same day’s Tattersalls Novice Hurdle, a race that the trainer has failed to win just once in the last 12 years.
Other star names from Closutton likely to strut their stuff on Saturday include Ballyburn (Ladbrokes Novice Chase) and Majborough in the Goffs Arkle.
Mullins already boasts an incredible DRF record with 47 winners in the event’s seven-year history. A massive 34 of those have been in Grade One races. His overall tally in the Irish Gold Cup, formerly known as the Hennessy, stands at 13 and Galopin Des Champs will be a hot favourite to add to that.
The reigning dual-Cheltenham Gold Cup champion boasts a flawless record over fences around Leopardstown and received a huge reception when beating Fact To File by more than seven lengths in the Savills Chase at Christmas.
Jockey Paul Townend has admitted to being “humbled” by the scale of the acclaim given to the horse at Christmas and suspects Galopin may now be at his peak.
“He seems to be the finished article now and long may he be around because we’ll find it very hard to replace him.
“He’s just becoming more grown up, but it’s different racing too. As a novice, if you are jumping as well as he did you are using that advantage, whereas when you got into open company they are catching up on you.
“Over those staying trips you’d prefer to be racing like he does, where you are in control of what you are doing to some extent.
“He just seems to have everything now and he loves it around Leopardstown. He’s done it on all grounds as well. The bottom line is that he’s just a very good horse.,” said Townend.
Galopin Des Champs was quickly made a general 4-6 favourite to extend his unbeaten record over fences at Leopardstown to seven.
An impressive display by Ballyburn this weekend is likely to only cement his place at the top of betting lists for Cheltenham’s Brown Advisory Chase after confirmation the top English novice The Jukebox Man will miss the festival.
His trainer Ben Pauling said: “The Jukebox Man has this morning sustained an injury during routine exercise that will sadly rule him out for the rest of the season. At this early stage, the feedback from our veterinary team and the specialists is positive that we can look forward to seeing him return in the autumn.”
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