Willie Mullins
has confirmed Un De Sceaux will venture into new territory this Sunday when he bids to secure his trainer a fifth success in the
French Champion Hurdle
.
Thousand Stars, a former dual-winner of the €370,000 Grande Course De Haies D’Auteuil, in 2011 and 2012, will join Un De Sceaux in the Grade One Paris highlight and so could Mullins’s Grade One-winning mare, Whiteout.
However, most attention is likely to focus on Un De Sceaux who kept his unbeaten record around the Auteuil track with a hugely impressive success in last month’s Prix La Barka.
That traditional trial was run over almost two-and-three- quarter miles, the furthest the Grade One-winning two-mile chase star has been asked to race over to date.
However, Sunday’s race will be over a full half-mile further again. “It certainly didn’t look the last day as if he had a problem with the trip. In fact, I’d say it was one of the best performances of his life. So the plan is to run. Thousand Stars will go too, and maybe Whiteout,” Mullins said.
Ireland’s leading trainer also recorded back-to-back wins in France’s most valuable hurdles prize when both Nobody Told Me and Rule Supreme scored in 2003-04.
It is 30 years since the legendary Dawn Run, trained by his father, Paddy Mullins, was killed in the French Champion Hurdle. “It looks like being a very good race this year. Blue Dragon looks the best horse they have in France at the moment, so it’s not going to be easy,” said Mullins.
Sunday’s other Grade One contest at Auteuil will be the €270,000 Prix Alain Du Breil, a race Mullins won with Diakali in 2013, and for which Footpad will line up this time.
It may be summer but there's no question of a break for the all-powerful Mullins team as they prepare to send a powerful team to next week's flat extravaganza at Royal Ascot.
Jump racing’s dominant figure recorded his fourth success at flat racing’s most glamorous festival when Clondaw Warrior landed last year’s Ascot Stakes and along with another former winner, Pique Sous, he will be in action again next week.
“Max Dynamite will go for the Gold Cup and Wicklow Brave will take his chance in the Hardwicke,” Mullins indicated.
Simenon found only the Queen’s runner, Estimate, too good when finishing runner-up in the 2013 Ascot Gold Cup, a race in which the same horse finished fourth in last year.
Max Dynamite had his own big-race near-miss when an unlucky runner-up in last season’s Melbourne Cup and is a 12/1 shot in a market dominated by Aidan O’Brien’s Order Of St George, impressive winner of last Friday’s Savel Beg Stakes.
The opening-day highlight of Royal Ascot 2016 is shaping up to be the clash of the Guineas winners in the St James’s Palace Stakes, for which O’Brien’s The Gurkha is a general 6/4 favourite in most ante-post lists.
Winner of the French Guineas at Deauville last month, The Gurkha shades the Curragh Guineas hero, Awtaad, who is 7/2 for his veteran trainer Kevin Prendergast, while Newmarket victor Galileo Gold is 9/2.
Another Irish star with a Group One Royal Ascot target is Michael Halford’s Anamba, impressive winner of a Listed race at Naas on her return to action recently.
One horse still in contention to make the reverse trip across the Irish Sea is the Mark Prescott-trained Celestial Path, one of 14 still remaining in Thursday evening’s Leopardstown feature, the Listed Coral Glencairn Stakes.
