RACING:PUNCHESTOWN'S AUTHORITIES reckon a six-race card without any steeplechases could turn out to be their best bet of racing with temperatures barely expected to get over freezing today.
Two races over fences have been pushed to the front of this afternoon’s programme which is dependant on a 7.30 inspection this morning.
“The threat from snow is minimal we think but it is forecast to get down to minus three or minus four overnight and then barely get over freezing during the day,” Punchestown’s manager, Richie Galway, said yesterday.
“On ground we’ve raced on before, a severe frost could make it unraceable. With that in mind we’ve divided a maiden hurdle and we will use a fresh strip of ground. Normally that would be about seven yards wide but we will make it 10 or 12 wide in the hope we can race there if the chases don’t make it. I would be hopeful though that we will be able to race,” he added.
That will be good news for Willie Mullins who sends a number of promising prospects to Punchestown and also has Arbor Supreme running for him in Chepstow’s Coral Welsh National.
The JP McManus-owned horse is the sole-Irish trained hope in a race first won by the visitors with Notre Pere in 2008.
On the home front, Mullins gives the Grade One winner Blackstairmountain a return to action in the two-and-a-half-mile conditions hurdle and if the former top novice runs up to anywhere near his 145 mark then he can make up for his disappointing effort at Down Royal in November.
The champion trainer has mined a spectacular vein of talent in France in recent years and his mare, Shifa, looks an interesting newcomer to Irish racing in the first division of the EBF maiden hurdle.
The five-year-old has won half of her six starts in her native France and can maintain Mullins’s good recent run of form along with Samain in the bumper.
Today’s scheduled feature is the Grade Three Visit Punchestown Juvenile Hurdle where Fearless Falcon puts the best Irish four-year-old form to date to the test.
Ado McGuinness’s runner was runner-up to Sailors Warn at Leopardstown a couple of weeks ago but could be vulnerable to an improving type and Mister Carter looks to fill that description.
Tommy Stack’s runner made a mistake at the last on his Limerick debut but that was the only false step and he looks a useful recruit to jumping.
Maktu plan to bear fruit
MAKTU CAN bring to fruition a two-year plan with victory in the Coral Welsh National at Chepstow today.
Trainer Pat Murphy has had this race in mind for some time and his prudent handling of the nine-year-old can pay off in the near-three-and-three-quartermile marathon.
Maktu was well supported before the abandonment of the original date over Christmas and with conditions promising to suit him down to the ground, there is no reason to look elsewhere.
