The Punchestown Festival provides Ireland’s National Hunt season with a major final act, and will also supply valuable insight into the campaign to come when it starts on Tuesday.
The cream of Irish jumping talent, particularly that of the all-conquering Willie Mullins team, will be on view in 40 races over five days that are worth €3.5 million in prize money. They include stellar names such as Galopin Des Champs and the two-mile title holder Marine Nationale, who goes in the day one festival feature, the €300,000 William Hill Champion Chase.
It’s no stretch, however, to argue that the festival’s most intriguing racing element will be imported. The enigma that Constitution Hill has become means that British racing’s most mercurial talent will be centre stage in Friday’s Boodles Champion Hurdle.
Unbeaten in 10 starts prior to Cheltenham, his Champion Hurdle fall kicked off a scarcely credible chain of events, ultimately leading to his unheralded compatriot Golden Ace lifting hurdling’s championship.
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That Constitution Hill fell again at Aintree stretched credulity even more and leaves the horse once acclaimed as an all time great with a major task in restoring his credibility ahead of next season.
Up against him will be Golden Ace and State Man, who ultimately threw away the Champion Hurdle with his own spectacular final flight spill. He’s chasing a hat-trick of wins in a mouthwatering contest that may provide an invaluable gauge of the division’s pecking order.
Mind you before that Kopek Des Bordes could upset the hierarchy completely if he’s spectacular in Tuesday’s opening Grade One. On the same card the much-heralded Ballyburn is on a retrieval mission of his own in the Dooley Champion Novice Chase.
Tuesday’s feature also promises to be hugely informative when it comes to establishing ranking for next year’s Champion Chase.
Marine Nationale lines up as a hugely impressive 18-length winner of Cheltenham’s two-mile crown and yet could find himself up against an odds-on favourite who’s never even run over the trip.
It is five months since Fact To File left Punchestown as the Gold Cup favourite following a Durkan success. A pair of chastening defeats by Galopin Des Champs at three miles put paid to that. Instead he dropped to the intermediate Ryanair test at Cheltenham, won superbly, and now tests the water to see if speed rather than stamina will be his game next season.
With the weather gods playing ball, and watering expected to begin sooner rather than later, Fact To File is likely to benefit from lining up on the opening day.
It is Spillane’s Tower that will carry JP McManus’s colours against Galopin Des Champs 24 hours later in the Punchestown Gold Cup, while Inothewayurthinkin, conqueror of Galopin at Cheltenham, is already enjoying his summer holidays.
Should Fact To File prove quick enough to take down the reigning two-mile champion it will leave him to fill in the Champion Chase slot in the champion owner’s enviable top-flight list of chasers for 2025-26.
That’s going to be no easy task. The tragedy of Michael O’Sullivan’s death inevitably dominated the aftermath of Marine Nationale’s hugely emotional victory at Cheltenham. From a form point of view Jonbon’s jarring error in the race left an unsatisfying element. But nothing can take away from how Barry Connell’s star travelled effortlessly to championship glory.
Seán Flanagan enjoyed an armchair spin on the horse that famously carried O’Sullivan to festival glory in 2023. He ultimately won with total authority and Connell believes Marine Nationale to have progressed again from that. His attitude to Fact To File is straightforwardly “bring it on” and such confidence is infectious.
There doesn’t appear to be a cap on the potential in Kopek Des Bordes and the unbeaten novice dominates the KPMG Hurdle. Three of his five opponents are stable companions and the best of them, Salvator Mundi, was well behind him in Cheltenham’s Supreme.
Paul Townend had no decision on what to ride in that race but his call to stick with Ballyburn in the Dooley Group Novice Chase is significant. Ballyburn’s Cheltenham performance was close to abject as he trailed his stable companion Lecky Watson. Seán O’Keeffe is on board him again but on his first try at three miles; Imparie Et Passe could prove a reliable alternative.
Don’t Rightly Know is an outsider for the big novice heat but is one of 15 cross-channel trained horses lining up on day one. Punchestown officials are predicting the most numerically strong British festival challenge in almost two decades.
Harry Derham has a pair of runners in the two-mile handicap, although the 2024 Cheltenham Festival winner Lark In The Mornin could prove tough to beat if bouncing back from a poor effort in last month’s County Hurdle.
The all-conquering Mullins is odds-on to land all three Grade One prizes up for grabs and will be fancied to perhaps exceed his 19-winner tally at the 2021 festival.
He introduces Leader Des Bordes, a half-brother to no less than Kopek Des Bordes, in the valuable Goffs Defender Bumper. Patrick Mullins has opted to ride Michael O’Leary’s newcomer for whom the Ryanair boss paid €210,000.
