Eile set to miss Punchestown

Al Eile is unlikely to run at the Punchestown Festival after being found to have aggravated an old shoulder injury following his disappointing run at Aintree.

The John Queally-trained gelding never looked like repeating last year’s victory in the Scottish And Newcastle Aintree Hurdle and trailed in sixth of the seven finishers behind Asian Maze on Saturday.

“He’s a little bit stiff in one of his shoulders. He seems to have tweaked something,” said Queally.

“It was too bad to be true. He had a shoulder problem as a younger horse and there has been a small recurrence of it.

“We are not quite sure when he did it. He made a mistake early on and after that he didn’t jump at all. That’s not him, he usually jumps well and he didn’t on Saturday.

“It was probably niggling him all the time.

“We’ll give him a few weeks off and I’d say he’d miss Punchestown. He’s entered in both the two and three-milers.

“We did think of going to France later on but I imagine that would be it for the season.

“We’ll see how he is in the next week.”