RACING: Willie Mullins is keeping his fingers crossed that Hedgehunter can recover from an excellent run in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in time to successfully defend his John Smith's Aintree Grand National crown in under two weeks time.
Hedgehunter is a general 5 to 1 favourite to repeat last year's National triumph and despite having top weight is officially 10lb "well in" on ratings after his second to War Of Attrition in the Gold Cup.
However, the impact of that Cheltenham effort, and the blood disorder that affected many of the Mullins team at the festival, is a concern on the run-up to the Liverpool Festival where Irish horses won a record eight races last year.
"We decided to have a crack at the Gold Cup and he ran a fantastic race, probably the best race of his career. If that impacts on Liverpool, so be it. We can't have it every way," Mullins said yesterday.
"I'm happy enough with the way he has come out of Cheltenham. He's back riding out and he has put back on all the weight he lost," he added. "Certainly a reproduction of that run would put him in the picture. But you need a lot of luck. How many National winners have come back the next year and fallen at the first? If you look back over the last 50 years, it's a fair few."
After being odds on before the festival to emerge as the leading Irish trainer at Cheltenham, the festival turned into an anti-climax for Mullins who didn't saddle a winner and came home with a blood disorder in the majority of the horses he sent to England.
"I think they're improving out of it although Irish Invader (finished distressed) didn't run well at the Curragh on Sunday," he said. "We will know more after we take bloods next week. We hope it's something that has passed on but we won't know for sure for a while yet."
The former champion trainer plans to send a small team to Liverpool and as well as Hedgehunter will be represented over the big fences at Aintree by Euro Leader (Topham) and also Bothar Na in the Foxhunters. One of the unluckiest horses at the Cheltenham Festival was Sublimity who did best of the Irish in fourth place in the Supreme after a far from clear passage through the race.
Trainer John Carr now plans to prepare the horse for the Punchestown Festival and is pondering a Champion Hurdle campaign with Sublimity next season.
"We were unlucky at Cheltenham. The faller early on didn't help and then we were carried wide at the top of the hill. It definitely cost us a few lengths," Carr said yesterday. "We opted to go round the outer to avoid trouble and ran into every kind of trouble you could get. It was just unfortunate." Philip Carberry will again be on board at Punchestown where Sublimity could run into an old rival in Iktitaf who beat him at the track in February.
"Cheltenham was just his third run over hurdles and I don't think we have much choice now but to think in terms of the Champion Hurdle for him," Carr said.
"The worry is that Colm Murphy thought Brave Inca was at a disadvantage last year when he was a first-season novice. But our horses are experienced from the Flat," he added.
The English trainer Robert Alner is preparing another former Gold Cup runner-up, Sir Rembrandt, for the Grand National and gave an upbeat report yesterday.
"The big question is how he adapts to Aintree but he is much better going left-handed and I would imagine the ground will be fine," he said.
