Punchestown’s Winter Festival shapes as Grade One Willie Mullins show

Punchestown officials anticipate more than 10,000 people through the turnstiles as the latest Winter Festival takes place there this weekend.

A Grade One double-header starts on Saturday featuring the €120,000 Unibet Morgiana Hurdle while 24 hours later the Gold Cup hero Galopin Des Champs returns to action in the John Durkan Chase.

Both days’ action will be live on RTÉ television while the Morgiana also features on ITV’s cross-channel coverage.

That State Man is such an overwhelming “penalty kick” to repeat his 2022 victory in the Morgiana against just three rivals might be good news for the Willie Mullins team but underlines continuing issues in broader competitive terms.

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Mullins will also saddle Galopin Des Champs to try and repeat his Durkan success a year ago. In a six-runner field, the only non-Mullins trained contender is Fastorslow, the horse that sprang a 20-1 surprise over Galopin Des Champs at the festival last April.

A lot of fingers are likely to be kept firmly crossed that Martin Brassil’s star actually makes it to the start to avoid an embarrassing scenario where a six-figure Grade One turns into a benefit for the champion trainer.

“Obviously, you’d like to see potentially bigger fields in those Grade One races. But you have to look at the quality of horses in them too. It’s the times we’re in,” said Punchestown’s chief executive Conor O’Neill on Friday.

Such times, where such a concentration of top talent is in so few hands, are at least partly behind Horse Racing Ireland’s (HRI) calendar rejig as the core National Hunt season has hit top gear this month.

Last weekend’s two-day Navan programme was the first of a series of Winter Festival’s that will continue to Fairyhouse next week and are designed to promote jump racing on the approach to Christmas.

There was broad satisfaction with the outcome at Navan which reported an attendance of more than 8,500 over the over two days.

Expectations are high that the traditional home of National Hunt racing in Ireland can pull off even better numbers as HRI’s rejig appears to have worked in Punchestown’s favour.

The Morgiana is no longer clashing with Cheltenham’s November meeting while the Durkan has been moved from its traditional December slot.

“This is something Punchestown has been looking at for a long number of years. Previously we always clashed with Cheltenham, and we always felt the John Durkan was too close to Christmas. We have no excuses this weekend. It is on RTÉ both days and the Morgiana is on ITV on Saturday,” O’Neill said.

“We would like to think we’ll get a fantastic crowd. All the indications are very positive. The weather looks like playing in our favour as well. I would certainly like to think that across the weekend we’d have in excess of 10,000 people over the two days,” he added.

In both top-flight features, it shapes very much like a Willie Mullins show. State Man would have to flop spectacularly not to give his trainer a 12th Morgiana in 13 years. And even if he did, it is his stable companion Echoes In Rain that looks best placed to take advantage.

Gordon Elliott at least runs both Pied Piper and Fils d’Oudairies but the Fastorslow camp could be forgiven for feeling a little like Gen Custer at the Big Horn.

Only Sizing John in 2017 has interrupted Mullins’s dominance of the race in the last seven years although even by his own lofty standards he has rarely delivered a show of strength like this.

Galopin Des Champs landed this a year ago en route to a superb Gold Cup victory at Cheltenham and his reappearance is an attraction in itself.

General 1-2 odds about winning back-to-back reflect both his official rating as 11lbs superior to Fastorslow as well as a wider suspicion that the festival outcome in April might have been an end-of-season aberration.

That could prove unfair to Fastorslow who progressed from handicap company in some style last season.

“It will be different ground and a shorter trip than the Punchestown Gold Cup but we are going there with a nice horse and hoping for a nice run.

“We are obviously facing the might of the Mullins battalion but it is great to have a horse like him and we’d be hoping he is still improving and getting better with age,” Brassil reported.

Galopin Des Champs is a general 2-1 favourite to retain his Gold Cup crown at Cheltenham in March while Fastorslow is among a chasing pack at double-figure odds.

It’s hard to argue with the bookmakers’ estimation on that score. And in terms of this weekend’s Grade One action they, as usual, look to be on the money too.