State Man is set to start a short-priced favourite to complete an all but perfect season in Punchestown’s Friday feature.
Willie Mullins’s star has been unbeaten in three domestic Grade One starts only to bump into the apparent paragon that is Constitution Hill when it mattered most in last month’s Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham.
As expected, State Man got closer than anything else but never threatened to land a glove on the English star.
However, in Constitution Hill’s absence Friday’s €300,000 Paddy Power Champion Hurdle looks State Man’s for the taking.
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He has beaten all his five opponents at least once already and on ratings has reached a standard that ordinarily would make him a perfectly reasonable Champion Hurdle winner.
Rather like Scottie Pippen in basketball, or even golf’s Ernie Els, it just seems State Man’s fate to be a top performer operating at the same time as a superior talent.
Whether or not he ascends to championship level at Cheltenham level next year largely looks to depend on the route Constitution Hill takes.
But even if the latter is sent over fences next season State Man could still fail to take the ultimate step by running into an emerging novice.
Bookmakers already rate his stable companion Impaire Et Passe a 4-1 second favourite for next year’s Champion at Cheltenham.
He lines up 35 minutes after State Man in Friday’s other Grade One, the Alanna Homes Champion Novice Hurdle, and is likely to start an even shorter odds-on price.
It’s hardly an ideal scenario in terms of competitive action but the festival action so far has underlined how Punchestown’s end of term context can conspire to confound the odds.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to make a convincing case for opposing State Man.
He scored at last year’s festival, started this season with a Morgiana victory here, before scoring at Leopardstown over Christmas.
His defeat of Honeysuckle at the Dublin Racing Festival was entirely convincing at the time and looks an even better performance in hindsight given the mare’s subsequent display at Cheltenham.
State Man’s misfortune was simply to come up against a superior talent at Cheltenham. But in Constitution Hill’s absence he should take centre stage back on home soil.
Impaire Et Passe also has a handful of opponents that on all evidence shouldn’t trouble the rising star.
Perhaps the best of them is his own stable companion Champ Kiely, a Grade One winner himself but a well beaten third to Impaire Et Passe in Cheltenham’s Ballymore.
An intriguing opponent is the former high-class flat horse High Definition who’s upped to two and a half miles for the first time.
That could provoke some improvement in a prospect who ran seventh to Marine Nationale in the Supreme at Cheltenham.
It will still be a surprise if he manages to seriously shake up Impaire Et Passe, who went into Cheltenham as something of a ‘hype horse’ based on homework and justified that reputation in style.
State Man won this race a year ago and Impaire Et Passe could well wind up taking a similar route to next season’s Champion Hurdle.
Apart from the opening Bishopscourt Cup, the Mullins team are heavily represented on Friday, including with both Annamix and Billaway in the Hunters chase.
Billaway had to give best to his stable companion in a big shock at Fairyhouse over Easter and faces a serious task in defending his title.
However, better ground and the fact such a laid-back character might only now be coming to his peak for the campaign suggest Billaway may be up to the task.
Mullins gives Sa Majeste a first Irish start in the novice hurdle that last year threw up El Fabiolo, and in 2013 the outstanding Un De Sceaux.
The JP McManus-owned runner won the second of his two starts in France at Auteuil last May.
Lecky Watson made a mockery of his 80-1 odds at Cheltenham and sets the standard in the bumper, but although Mullins has four in the Grade Three Francis Flood Mares’ Chase, Impervious could once again prove too tough to crack.
