Champion Hurdle now looks far more interesting
Indeed, Walsh, who is more than capable of talking the hind legs off a donkey, struggled to put two sentences together when interviewed on At The Races, after the contest.
The lead into the Morgiana had seen Mullins unusually bullish, so good apparently good was Faugheen’s work.
Then on Sunday morning, we learned the champion hurdler had run away from Nichols Canyon in a gallop the previous Tuesday.
Mullins subsequently confirmed that was very much the case, after Faugheen had been beaten.
But we’ve been here before, or at least in a situation that was more or less the same.
Remember a horse trained by Mullins called Alvisio Ville?
I have good reason to recall him. At Leopardstown last February, he ran in the Grade One Deloitte Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown.
Partnered by AP McCoy, Alvisio Ville went off a heavily backed 11-10 favourite.
Prior to the race, I was reliably informed he had murdered Nichols Canyon in a gallop and that came from someone watching the work.
The course of action we had to take was crystal clear, back Alvisio Ville for as much as one was prepared to lose on any horse.
Then it was just a case of sitting back and enjoying the view, with lots of lovely lolly virtually guaranteed.
But, of course, the reality was to prove entirely different. Nichols Canyon, ridden by Walsh, made virtually all to bolt in, with Alvisio Ville finishing a well-beaten third.
Even writing about it now, many months later, has the potential to make you break out in a serious sweat.
That’s why, when I heard on Sunday morning about what Faugheen had done to Nichols Canyon some days earlier, I didn’t take the slightest notice of it.
Once bitten, twice shy and all of that.
Anyway, is there any possible explanation for Faugheen’s performance, which logically was a long way short of his best?
Walsh indicated afterwards that Faugheen was inclined to hang, but he has seemed equally happy going left or right in the past, so we don’t really know what that was about.
Faugheen doesn’t have to make the running to produce his best, so the fact was asked to track Nichols Canyon is irrelevant.
There are, however, two possible reasons why he was beaten.
The first is that Faugheen is simply not as good as we thought. That’s a definite possibility.
But it is far too early to be arriving at such a conclusion and, perhaps, he needs a decent surface to be seen at his best.
Before Punchestown, Faugheen was unbeaten in 11 races, one of them a point-to-point.
He has, admittedly, handled every ground in the past, right up to heavy.
But look through his record and Faugheen’s best days have come when the ground was on the good side. It was demanding on Sunday, soft, soft to heavy in places.
When he landed the Champion Hurdle in March it was good to soft and then good to yielding when scoring at the Punchestown Festival.
It was good to soft when he won at Kempton at Christmas and good when the seven-year-old ran away with the Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle at Cheltenham in 2014.
It was even good ground when Faugheen won his sole point-to-point at Ballysteen in April of 2012.
Are we grasping at straws? I just don’t know.
What is a fact is the air of invincibility that surrounded Faugheen is now gone and that is set to make the Champion Hurdle a far more interesting race than it promised to be.
Mind you, we would do well to keep in mind Vautour’s major blip last season, when he ran a shocker at Leopardstown at Christmas.
Mullins then brought him back to win at Leopardstown in January, before Vautour destroyed a high-class field in the JLT Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham by 15 lengths.
Faugheen’s disappointing effort at Punchestown was nowhere near as bad as Vautour’s pre-Christmas display.
Willie Mullins’ French-import, Beau Mome, was backed as if defeat was out of the question in a maiden hurdle at Punchestown last Saturday, going off at 8-11 against 18 rivals.
He had won a bumper in his native country, at a track called Paray-le-monial, 602 days earlier, beating a horse called Bull Fighter.
Now what was worth noting when it came to Bull Fighter was he failed to win in three races subsequently.
But undaunted Beau Mome was burdened with heavy liabilities and was particularly strong on the exchanges.
He performed dismally, though, finishing a remote 10th. Beau Mome couldn’t be that bad, could he?
Aafter Sprinter Sacre bolted in at Cheltenham on Sunday, it really was a case of who might take the prize for crying the most!
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a good old cry, although you’d image Un De Sceaux’s connections might have plans to make the Sprinter Sacre lot sob for a different reason.
