RACING:IT MAY mean racing close to some valuable Christmas dates, but champion trainer Willie Mullins still intends to send Hurricane Fly and some of his other stable stars to Fairyhouse next week.
The triple Grade One “Winter Festival” fixture has been re-scheduled twice due to the bad weather and is now set to be run at the Ratoath track on Thursday next.
Hurricane Fly had been due to make his seasonal reappearance in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle last weekend, and Mullins is still keen to start the Champion Hurdle contender in the two-and-a-half-mile feature despite its new proximity to Leopardstown’s Festival Hurdle over Christmas.
“Hopefully it will be on and hopefully we will be able to go,”he said yesterday. “I would like to get a race into him as soon as I can. I think it is more important to get him out when he is right than waiting for any other race. These are the races we keep horses like this to run in.”
Mikael d’Haguenent and Zaidpour had been warm favourites for the two other Grade One pots, the Drinmore Chase and the Royal Bond Novice Hurdle, and they too are likely to take up those engagements if right.
Another trainer keen to take up the Hatton’s Grace option is Colm Murphy, who plans to send his star mare Voler La Vedette to Fairyhouse next week.
However the Wexford trainer added: “Having a race on heavy ground over two-and-a-half miles might mean things get tight for Christmas, and if it has to be postponed again I’d imagine some horses would miss one of them.
“But I wish the race was tomorrow. The mare is fine. We’ve been pretty lucky with the weather. There’s six or seven inches of snow lying here, but we put salt in the gallops after last winter and it seems to be paying off. We’ve had no hiccups. If it goes ahead at Fairyhouse on Thursday we’ll be there.”
Murphy also had an upbeat bulletin on his two-mile champion chaser Big Zeb, who will appear next in the Paddy Power Chase at Leopardstown over Christmas.
“We have stepped up his canters and he is doing things nicely. Everything going well, he’ll be at Leopardstown,” he said.
Michael Hourigan’s focus next week will hopefully be on Cheltenham, where the luckless Dancing Tornado attempts to finally secure a big pot in the December Gold Cup on Saturday week.
Runner-up in the Kerry National in September, the JP McManus-owned horse was also second in last month’s Paddy Power Gold Cup to Little Josh at Cheltenham when claimer Adrian Heskin partnered Dancing Tornado instead of Tony McCoy.
The chestnut will be 3lb better with Little Josh in the December Gold Cup, and Hourigan said: “It’s more than likely that Dancing Tornado (10st 11lb) will return to Cheltenham for the December Gold Cup. We were very pleased with his run in the Paddy Power and he came out of the race fine.
“Tony McCoy always said that a big handicap chase at Cheltenham would be the ideal race as they would go a decent gallop. Dancing Tornado would be racing off a higher mark but we will take that on the chin.”
