Mullins unveils Morning plans

Snowy Morning has been given a clean bill of health following his bold performance in the Royal & SunAlliance Chase at Cheltenham on Wednesday.

The progressive seven-year-old found only Denman too strong in the Grade One event and is now likely to have at least one more run before going on his summer holidays.

“Snowy Morning came out of the race well and picked up a little cut out in the paddock afterwards but he came home well and he seems OK,” explained handler Willie Mullins.

“He’ll maybe go to Fairyhouse and Punchestown, all being well.

“I’ll probably enter him in Aintree as well but I imagine Punchestown will be the plan.”

Mullins also issued an upbeat report regarding Black Harry, who looked booked for at least second when taking a crashing fall at the last in the Brit Insurance Novices’ Hurdle, won by Wichita Lineman.

Having travelled best of all for much of the race, Black Harry had just been passed by the favourite and took a long while to get to his feet.

“He ran a cracker and he’s a lot better than I thought he would be,” Mullins added.

“He travelled home yesterday and he’s still stiff and sore but a lot better than we thought he’d be as on Friday evening he was pretty sore after the race.

“He ate up on Friday night and on Saturday too so I’m hoping he’ll recover quite quickly.”

County Carlow-based Mullins is looking forward to sending his exciting prospect over bigger obstacles next term – but could yet have one more outing over hurdles this season.

“He’ll definitely go novice chasing next season. We’ve just been biding our time and only ran him once last year,” he said.

“He might go to Punchestown. We’ll keep him in now and it’ll probably be two or three weeks before we get a saddle back on him, which would mean that’s the only place we’d be able to get him.”