RACING:DERMOT WELD already boasts a near 50 per cent success rate from his National Hunt runners so far this jumps season and has a "small but select" team gearing up for what could be a big-race winter campaign for the top Curragh trainer.
Unaccompanied has already hit the mark this term by winning a Listed race at Naas on Saturday, a ninth success so far in the 2011-12 jumps season for her trainer, who has sent out just 19 starters.
The Triumph Hurdle runner-up could be aimed next at the Grade One Hatton’s Grace Hurdle at Fairyhouse next month, a festival meeting where she may be joined by another high-class dual-purpose performer in Galileo’s Choice.
He hasn’t been seen since winning the Group Three Kilternan Stakes on Irish Champion Stakes day at Leopardstown, after which a prospective preparation for the Melbourne Cup had to be aborted due to technicalities in the race conditions in Australia.
Galileo’s Choice has, however, won his only start over jumps to date at the Galway festival during the summer and is set to make the leap up to Grade One company in the Royal Bond Hurdle next.
“Unaccompanied was our 19th winner of the year, both flat and jumps, and while I have to speak to Eva Marie Haefner (of owners Moyglare Stud) I would think the race at Fairyhouse is a distinct possibility,” Weld said yesterday.
One Moyglare-owned star that won’t be seen in action this winter, despite appearing in some ante-post lists for the Champion Hurdle, is the 2009 Tattersalls Gold Cup winner Casual Conquest.
The horse that finished placed in both the Epsom and Curragh Derbies of 2008 has been gelded after a series of problems since his last racecourse appearance when finishing out of the money behind Sea The Stars in the Irish Champion Stakes over two years ago.
He is back at the Weld team but the trainer reported: “He is not going jumping and we will wait until the spring to start him again on the flat.”
Another Weld runner that has yet to see a hurdle on a racecourse is Waaheb but that hasn’t stopped bookmakers installing the high-class bumper horse as an 8 to 1 ante-post favourite for the Supreme Novices Hurdle at Cheltenham in March.
“The plan is to look at Leopardstown at Christmas with him. He’ll start off in a maiden. We should be able to get him there, especially if the weather we are getting continues,” the trainer said.
Waaheb wound up last season just losing out to the ill-fated Lovethehigherlaw in a classic finish to the Champion Bumper at Punchestown. Along with the November Handicap winner Hidden Universe, another likely to reappear at Leopardstown’s Christmas festival, Waaheb makes up a winter team that their trainer describes as “small but select.”
Just eight entries remain in Saturday’s Betfair Chase at Haydock but they include some of the cream of British steeplechasing, including the Gold Cup and King George hero Long Run.
That isn’t preventing Rob Hennessy from planning to take them on, however, with his high-class chaser Rubi Light, who threw away what looked a winning Grade Two opportunity at Gowran last month when falling at the last. He then had to miss Down Royal’s JNwine Champion Chase with a blood problem.
Rubi Light will work this morning and if he comes out of that unscathed he will travel to Haydock.
