Ruby Walsh: Patrick Mullins can have his day on Kilcruit
T 1.30pm this afternoon, as exciting a bunch of novice hurdlers that have assembled for many years will hurtle through the start at the bottom of Cheltenham’s straight. The traditional roar will greet them for the first time in 24 months, but it will sound like a whisper to those reaching 30 miles per hour as they thunder for the first hurdle.
None of these youngsters will ever have faced preliminaries, tension, or noise as they will today. It will be too much mentally for at least one, if not two of them, but nobody knows how they will react until they have been in the mixing pot. All the dreams will be alive when Dysart Dynamo lifts off in front of Constitution Hill, with Jonbon, Kilcruit and Mighty Potter just behind them.
The potential on show in this opening contest could be endless, but for punters it is a minefield. There is no standout horse, and when one of these crosses the line in front the answer will only be apparent.
Dysart Dynamo is Willie Mullins’s first string, but the second, Kilcruit, is not really a second-string. Thankfully, for me, Paul Townend hasn’t found a way to ride two horses in the one race either. Deserting Kilcruit won’t have been easy for him but will bring Patrick Mullins joy. He will get the chance to ride a horse he missed out on riding last year when a bizarre interpretation of Covid rules excluded amateur riders from the meeting.
Both horse and jockey have a score to settle, but Nicky Henderson will want to make his presence felt at this meeting and fires two big names at this race. The Lambourn grapevine has been screaming Constitution Hill’s name for weeks now, and Jonbon was famous long before the Holdens cashed him in for a half a lotto. Mighty Potter, for Gordon Elliott, is the value pick, but my choice is only one of hope, and that’s for Kilcruit, probably because of a family connection.
Three of the top five in the Arkle betting are five years old but none of that generation has won this contest since Voy Por Ustedes in 2006. He had a five-pound weight allowance that no longer exists, making this a difficult battle for them to win.
Blue Lord scraped home in the Irish version, so the case for fancying the favourite, Edwardstone, is strong. But he is eight and the last two winning eight-year-olds were champions: Moscow Flyer and Sizing Europe. I doubt he is quite what they were but could still be good enough here.
If you need a tip for the Ultima handicap chase, look elsewhere in these pages because my interests are already on the Champion Hurdle. Honeysuckle is 14 and not out. She jumps, stays, quickens, battles, and does, every time, precisely what her CV suggests. With stardom comes pressure, but only the humans associated with her will be aware of that. I believe horses understand the difference between winning and losing, between good and evil, but I do not believe they know of expectation.
Being calm and delivering will be Rachael Blackmore’s job because Honeysuckle will want to do what she always does. Her most significant attribute is that she has no weaknesses. She is not tactically reliant on circumstances going her way and has won races run in various ways.
The opposition can’t ride to beat her. They must ride to maximise their own horse’s ability and only Appreciate It looks to have the potential for that.
HE plus is Willie Mullins trains him, the negative is he hasn’t run in 12 months, and my fear for him is you can’t have any negative when tackling Honeysuckle. She is not a casual punter’s price, but horse racing can be about watching talent, so watch her.
She could have been heading for her third Mares’ Hurdle, but a second Champion will suffice and give a lesser mare a chance of glory today. This renewal looks wide open, and Telmesomethinggirl is favourite, trying to make it happy hour for her connections. She came from off the pace to land the Mares’ Novice Hurdle here last year and, undoubtedly, this has been for the target for 363 days. Horse racing is a game of opinions, though, and I remain uncertain about the strength of last year’s mares’ novice form. Therefore, I believe Stormy Ireland’s day in the Cheltenham sun might be on the horizon.
Forty minutes later, in the Boodles Handicap Hurdle, Gaelic Warrior will follow her out onto the track for Willie Mullins. He is the proverbial talking horse, and hopefully he is not Mr Ed and gallops rather than just talks. Plenty of his opposition have targeted this contest, and any of Gordon Elliot’s squad, or Brazil, represent better each-way value.
There is value in the each-way markets here, even if Gaelic Warrior manages to win. Prices are maths to create a book that generates profit for the bookmaker, so Gaelic Warrior’s short price means the others could be too big.
The National Hunt Chase will bring the curtain down on today’s action, and it’s hard not to see an Irish winner. We all might need this to get out of the day showing a profit, but it’s not exactly straightforward.
Run Wild Fred is easy to fancy. He has had plenty of runs and a Troytown victory means he fits the stats for the usual type of winner. Stattler looks like he could be a superior animal, but with only two chase starts to his name, he must break that stat model to win.
The one with the runs and class could easily be Vanillier. Last year, he won the Albert Bartlett and had four runs over fences, but he has finished behind Stattler twice in his life.
The second time was his last start at Naas, but it is easy to argue that Gavin Cromwell’s yard was slightly out of form that day.
So, going back to last year’s Cheltenham Festival and if Vanillier can reproduce his Albert Bartlett run, he is the one I would like to be on.
