Eustace tops Hurdle field
The dual Champion Hurdle winner was third behind Brave Inca last time as his bid to win three successive Champions at Cheltenham was thwarted.
Six lengths behind Dessie Hughes’s runner that day was Al Eile but John Queally’s six-year-old took this race 12 months ago when beating World Hurdle winner Inglis Drever by a neck.
Hardy Eustace and Al Eile form half of a formidable Irish team in the two-and-a-half mile contest with Edward O’Grady’s Coral Cup winner Sky’s The Limit and Asian Maze, a winner last year for Thomas Mullins, also lining up.
World Hurdle winner My Way De Solzen has been declared by Alan King, although he runs in today’s John Smith’s And Flixton Conservative Club Liverpool Hurdle.
Mister McGoldrick, engaged in today’s John Smith’s Melling Chase, has been left in by Sue Smith. The Bingley trainer also has Patriarch Express entered.
Completing the line-up are Jonjo O’Neill’s Intersky Falcon, the Seamus Mullins-trained Kawagino, Steve Gollings’ Royal Shakespeare, Emma Lavelle’s Self Defense and German raider Timolino.
