RACING:HURRICANE FLY is on course to try to preserve a 100 per cent success rate this season at Punchestown next month before a possible attempt on a special hurdling Triple Crown in Paris in June.
Willie Mullins has indicated a desire to run the 2011 English and Irish Champion Hurdle winner in the French Champion Hurdle, the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil, on June 18th.
Ireland’s champion trainer has won the €370,000 Auteuil highlight twice in his career before but the only horse ever to complete the hat-trick before was the legendary Dawn Run in 1984.
“It is something my father achieved with Dawn Run and I’d like to try it with this fella,” Mullins reported. “For a horse with so much pace, you could question whether he will get three miles. But he did win over two and a half in France as a four-year old and that gives me encouragement.” Before that Hurricane Fly will be aimed at defending his Punchestown crown in the Rabobank Champion Hurdle.
Sixteen horses remain in the Grade One race and Mullins is looking forward to Hurricane Fly’s attempt at winning at Punchestown’s festival for the third year running.
“We have had ups and downs with him the past couple of years but this year everything has gone according to plan and we are happy that at Cheltenham he was able to show what we always hoped he might do,” he said yesterday. “We were pleased with that and delighted with how he has come out of Cheltenham.”
A number of British entries remain in the big hurdling highlight including the former champion Binocular and Menorah who finished behind Hurricane Fly at Cheltenham.
“Menorah was disappointing in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham and there was no real reason for it,” said Philip Hobbs. “He is in good form now, he was a little bit flat for a week or two but he seems fine now so we will go straight to the Rabobank Champion Hurdle.
Mille Chief, Overturn and Starluck are other British-trained possibles for the Day Four highlight at Punchestown.
Mullins’s triple-Cheltenham festival winner Quevega will also try and defend her Ladbrokes World Series Hurdle crown on the third day of the Punchestown festival although no decision on the participation of her stable companion Thousand Stars will be made until closer to the time.
“Quevega will be going for the three-mile hurdle, I think,” said Mullins. “I worried whether we had got her straight enough for Cheltenham but I think maybe it actually suits her better to be like that because she was very impressive.”
