Gordon Elliott is set to saddle a massive team of 44 horses at this weekend’s Navan Racing Festival, including 11 of the 20 runners lining up for Sunday’s Bar One Troytown Chase. But perhaps the most eye-catching figure of all is the meagre four runners lining up for Willie Mullins.
Gentleman de Mee is the champion trainer’s single Saturday starter at the Co Meath track, in the Bar One Fortria Chase. Mullins’s Sunday trio includes a pair of bumper runners, leaving just one to line up over jumps.
With a long winter campaign on the horizon for his huge squad of talent the sport’s dominant figure is clearly taking no chances, although predicting when the mud returns is a tough job. Navan officials were forced into watering during the week, with a good to yielding surface the aim for a weekend programme that is live on RTÉ.
Despite those conditions a field of 20 will line up for the €100,000 Troytown prize, with the bulk of them from a single yard. A year ago Elliott saddled 14 in the Troytown, winning it with Coko Beach, his sixth success in the race in the last decade.
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Charges of undue dominance by one figure inevitably followed that. Elliott responded by saying it would have been embarrassing all round if there had only been eight or nine lining up and that a concentration element is pervasive in many sports besides racing.
It’s a debate that is likely to surface again now with Elliott’s Co Meath neighbour Gavin Cromwell saddling four in the Troytown and another of jump racing’s “Big Four”, Henry de Bromhead, doubly represented. Once again Mullins is not involved in a historic handicap he last won in 2009.
Nevertheless, there are plenty star names on show for Irish racing’s latest “festival” theme that began last year when over 8,500 attended the concentration of Navan’s best autumn prizes into a single weekend.
None will be “starrier” than Bob Olinger who prepares to defend Saturday’s Grade Two Railway Bar Lismullen Hurdle that he won a year ago. The horse once predicted to be the sport’s next major star hasn’t lived up to that heady billing but remains an enigmatic talent that engages popular interest.
With Rachael Blackmore still sidelined by a neck injury sustained in September, the in-form Darragh O’Keeffe rides Bob Olinger for the just a second time. O’Keeffe was on board for Bob Olinger’s winning debut over fences when the world appeared to be at his feet.
Just beaten by Impaire Et Passe in the Aintree Hurdle last April, his stylish success at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day was impressive. This is as quick a surface as Bob Olinger has ever raced on, but it could suit a horse that travels as well as he does in his races.
Opposition includes the 2022 winner Home By The Lee and his stable companion Dawn Rising, a high-class stayer on the flat who will relish the ground and boasts a course and distance win but may be vulnerable to a late Bob Olinger spurt.
Saturday’s other Grade Two sees Captain Guinness go for a Fortria Chase hat-trick. De Bromhead’s runner has always laboured in the shadow of more high-profile stable companions, but unlike Bob Olinger managed to pull off championship glory at Cheltenham in March. Everything fell his way to pull off a first Grade One in the Champion Chase where he had Gentleman de Mee closing in second.
Other Grade One winners Banbridge and Found A Fifty make this a deep contest, although a strict reading of the weights favours Gentleman de Mee. Just as relevant could be how the Mullins runner relishes quick ground.
Considering the pick he enjoyed, Jack Kennedy unhesitatingly opting for American Mike from Elliott’s Troytown team will be enough to persuade many. At the sort of best that saw him beat Fact To File here a year ago, American Mike will be hard to beat even off 11.11.
That best has been on much softer going than he will encounter now, and popular momentum behind him could result in value elsewhere, perhaps no more so than his stable companion Riaan, a good second at the Dublin Racing Festival in February.
Just four line up for Sunday’s Beginners’ Chase but two of them won at the Cheltenham Festival in March, and in Slade Steel there is some more genuine star power for the weekend crowds.
Slade Steel impressed with a defeat of Mystical City and Firefox in last season’s Supreme. Although he subsequently finished behind that pair at Punchestown the former point-to- point winner has always looked like coming into his own over fences.
Better Days Ahead, another point-to-point scorer and winner of the Martin Pipe last March, is another exciting chasing recruit to relish.
