Willie Mullins looks to secure new Grade One success in the US

Willie Mullins has new Grade One ambitions in his sights as Ireland’s champion trainer has a rare top-flight runner in the US on Saturday night.

Scaramanga will have Paul Townend on his back when tackling the $200,000 Iroquois Hurdle at the Percy Warner Park track outside Nashville in Tennessee.

The Malcolm Denmark-owned horse ran fourth to Langer Dan in the Coral Cup at Cheltenham in just his third start for Mullins.

Paddy Power rate the ex-Paul Nicholls runner a 7-4 joint-favourite with the local star Snap Decision, who is trying to win the race named after the first US-bred Epsom Derby winner for a third year in a row. The race is off at 9.40 Irish time and is live on Sky Sports.

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The Irish team will hope for better transatlantic fortune than when Wicklow Brave, with the race apparently at his mercy, took a fatal fall at the final obstacle in the 2019 American Grand National in Far Hills.

It is a decade since Mullins enjoyed Grade 1 success in Japan when Blackstairmountain won the Nakayama Grand Jump.

He also enjoyed multiple top-flight victories in France over the years and will have a big team at Auteuil next weekend, including runners in both the French Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup.

Townend will make it back in time for Sunday’s action at Killarney where Ramillies, topweight for the Tote National, is one of four rides for the champion jockey.

There’s also Irish interest in Haydock on Saturday where a trio of Charles Byrnes runners are topped by Byker in the featured Swinton Hurdle. The sole four-year-old in the contest was just touched off by Jazzy Matty in the Boodles at Cheltenham on his last start.

In other news, the board of Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) has unanimously approved the signing of new media rights arrangements for 21 of the country’s 26 racecourses starting next year.

A statement from the governing body described the rights sales process as “fair robust and transparent with a significant degree of independent oversight.”

It also said it was “regrettable” the five remaining tracks that make up United Irish Racecourses (UIR) rejected the deal negotiated by its media rights committee with Sporting Information Services (SIS) and Racecourse Media Group (RMG).

[ Lucrative broadcasting deal falters as Irish racing’s media rights spat spirals ]

[ United Irish Racecourses call on Government to intervene in media rights issue ]

UIR has accused HRI of taking too much of the media rights revenue for itself and is currently negotiating with Arena Racing Company (ARC) which is the main competitor to SIS/RMG.

However, on Friday HRI’s chief executive Suzanne Eade robustly defended the processes involved during the long-running dispute.

“Any attempt to paint the tender process as unfair, or the distribution model as unjust, is either lacking a basic understanding of the media rights landscape or is misrepresenting the facts,” she said.

“Irish media rights revenues have increased by nearly fifty per cent since the last deal was agreed at the end of 2015 and grown more than six-fold between 2007 and 2022.

“Based on future grown projections, it is hoped the total value could grow by an estimated further fifty per cent by 2028,” Eade also commented.

The new five-year SIS/RMG deal was worth an estimated €47 million per annum prior to Tuesday’s decisive Association of Irish Racecourses vote.