The veteran Sire Du Berlais has a rare festival hat-trick in his sights on Day Three of the Punchestown festival.
Successful in the Stayers crown at Cheltenham, and subsequently victorious at Aintree, JP McManus’s remarkable horse tries to complete the set in Thursday’s €300,000 Ladbrokes Champion Hurdle.
It would put a seal on an unlikely late career resurgence for the 11-year-old. Not many athletic performers flourish most towards the latter stages of their careers. The US boxer Bernard Hopkins for instance was exceptional in peaking at 40. Generally, tough, time withers sporting capacity. The little scrapper that is Sire Du Berlais appears to buck the trend.
When winning back-to-back Pertemps Finals (2019-20) at Cheltenham he looked a high-class handicapper able to hump big weights. Runner up in the 2021 Stayers, a maiden Grade 1 at Aintree last year looked at the time like just reward for an admirable over-achieving horse.
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Four uninspiring starts earlier this term led to Sire Du Berlais starting an unconsidered 33-1 shot at Cheltenham last month only for Gordon Elliott’s stalwart to upset the applecart and become Stayers champion.
Scepticism about the validity of that form led to him subsequently starting at 8-1 in Aintree and although he didn’t’ look happy through much of the Liverpool Hurdle he ultimately powered through to beat a flattering Marie’s Rock.
Now, Sire Du Berlais has a shot at pulling off a divisional festival hat-trick that greats of the game such as Istabraq and Sprinter Sacre have managed.
It is a rare late transformation in fortunes for a horse whose performance fluctuations in the past Elliott has put down to which side of the bed Sire Du Berlais gets out of. It’s an imprecise form-guide but at 11 the horse appears to be happier at getting up than ever before.
Despite that he’s likely to be comparatively overlooked in the market once again on Thursday with both his stable companion Teahupoo and Klassical Dream, winner for the last two years, ahead of him in ante-post lists. Even the returning Monkfish has been shorter with some firms.
It would be a major achievement though to pull of the three-mile Triple Crown and presumption is dangerous when it comes to a horse clearly in the form of his life.
A complicating factor in all calculations is a forecast containing up to 20mms of rainfall through Thursday evening. Even Sire Du Berlais’ powers of recovery might be tested if conditions turn very testing on the back of such a busy programme.
In contrast it will be a case of the softer the better for Teahupoo, the old stager’s stablemate who’s almost half his age, has had a break since finishing third past the post at Cheltenham, and is officially rated 2lbs superior to Sire Du Berlais and Klassical Dream.
Teahupoo looked a likely winner for much of the Stayers at Cheltenham and wove something of a zigzag pattern up the straight for Davy Russell. Jordan Gainford takes over now and was successful in his only previous ride on the horse.
Perhaps the horse officials most hope lines up on Thursday is Mouse Morris’s outsider Indiana Jones in the other Grade One. He is the only non-Willie Mullins horse among the quartet declared for the €125,000 Barberstown Castle Novice Chase.
Should he miss out for whatever reason it will turn the race into a Closutton benefit with the Arkle hero El Fabiolo likely to start very short odds to beat his stable companions Saint Roi and Dysart Dynamo. Mullins has won the race for the last seven years.
The big spectacle on Thursday is set to be the Mongey La Touche over the banks course. The longest race run in Ireland contains a pair of Enda Bolger trained runners and Stealthy Tom looks to have first rate claims of giving Bolger a 15th success in the race.
There are a trio of cross-channel raiders in the three-mile handicap hurdle although the best chance of a winner for the visitors might come through Douglas Talking in an earlier handicap chase.
Representing the Grand National winning team of Derek Fox and Lucinda Russell, Douglas Talking got mugged late on by Dancing On My Own at Aintree. If conditions don’t get too soft the front-runner could prove hard to peg back.
