Brassil waits on Leopardstown ground
Martin Brassil will leave it late before deciding whether to run Nickname in the Baileys Arkle Perpetual Challenge Cup at Leopardstown on Sunday.
The County Kildare trainer wants soft ground for the French import, who has created a big impression in his two outings over fences at Leopardstown.
After beating subsequent winner Our Ben by 10 lengths a month ago, Nickname successfully stepped up to Grade Two company in spectacular style by beating Father Matt by 11 lengths two weeks ago.
Now he could move up to Grade One class against other promising young Irish chasers over two miles and one furlong.
“I won’t decide until Friday morning when I see what the ground report is. He wants it soft,” said Brassil.
“We’ve just been doing the usual with him since his last run and he seems fine.”
Should conditions be unsuitable at the weekend, Nickname would be re-routed to the Dr PJ Moriarty Chase, also at Leopardstown two weeks later.
“If he doesn’t run on Sunday, there’s a race in two weeks, the Dr PJ Moriarty Chase, a Grade One for novices, on Hennessy day,” Brassil added.
Nickname is generally available at 10-1 for the Irish Independent Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham, but Brassil will only consider the Festival if there is plenty of cut in the ground for the seven-year-old.
“If they get a monsoon he’d probably go to Cheltenham. He’ll need one to run over there as it’s usually good ground. The Arkle is the only race I’ve put him in over there,” he added.
The going at Leopardstown is described as yielding to soft on the chase course and yielding, yielding to soft in places on the hurdles track.
Although the forecast for the rest of the week is favourable, the track is not expected to dry out much more.
“It’s due to stay dry until Sunday. I don’t think it will dry out a huge amount. It’s very calm and cold and I don’t think there’ll be anything dramatic,” said racing manager Tom Burke.
“We’ve had a lot of cloud cover over the last few days. It’s still very cloudy again today and the Met Office are saying cold conditions are going to remain.
“Whether we get frost or not depends on how much cloud cover we get, but everything’s perfect at the moment.”
