Punchestown: No sign of Honeysuckle’s winning run ending

Most winning streaks eventually end, although it will be a stunning reversal if it happens to Honeysuckle and Rachael Blackmore at Punchestown on Friday.

National Hunt racing’s poster-partnership are unbeaten in 15 races and could start their shortest ever ‘SP’ to stretch that run to 16 in the Paddy Power Champion Hurdle.

With a €300,000 prize fund it is the festival’s richest and apparently least competitive contest.

None of which will matter to the vast majority of a ‘Ladies’ Day’ crowd eager to acclaim racing royalty.

Rachael Blackmore hoping for fifth time lucky at Irish Grand National

---

Allaho storms to superb Punchestown Gold Cup victory

---

Lord Lariat hands McLoughlin back-to-back Irish Grand National crowns

---

Coronation rather than competition is likely to be their priority as Honeysuckle tackles a handful of opponents used to being put in their place by her and so put a seal on another perfect season.

Already a winner of the Irish Champion Hurdle in February at prohibitive odds of 1-5, she picked up the crown that ultimately matters for a second time in Cheltenham last month and is all but unbackable to complete hurdling’s festival championship hat-trick for a second year in a row.

Defeat is all but unthinkable and would certainly inject an unwanted anti-climactic tone to a campaign ending on Saturday.

However, Honeysuckle’s victory in this race a year ago underlined her ability to get the job done even when at less than her best, while Cheltenham suggested a mare at the peak of her powers.

“I think it’s fair comment to say she only does what she needs to in order to win her races,” trainer Henry de Bromhead said. “That probably has helped her keep reproducing so consistently throughout her career.”

Maybe this winning streak will come to a halt at some point. The superb novice Constitution Hill put up figures at Cheltenham that theoretically at least would have given him the beating of his senior here.

It is impossible though to pin statistics to something as indefinable as will to win. Honeysuckle has that in spades and should send the festival feelgood factor rocketing on Friday.

Three-pronged attack

State Man is one of those up and coming novices that could threaten Honeysuckle's supremacy next season and he tops a three-pronged attack by Willie Mullins on the Grade One Alanna Homes Champion Novice Hurdle.

Mullins’s decision to drop Sir Gerhard to two miles backfired on Tuesday while State Man tries two and a half miles for the first time here.

He belied his inexperience to win the County Hurdle at Cheltenham where he looked a naturally speedy runner.

He’s up against a proven Grade One winner in Three Stripe Life who’s been mixing it with Sir Gerhard all season, while Flame Bearer, who has been kept to a domestic campaign, is progressive.

State Man’s stable companion Kilcruit came into his own as a bumper horse at this festival a year ago and could relish the longer trip compared to his distant view of Constitution Hill in the Supreme at Cheltenham.

Elimay was another Mullins winner at Cheltenham and should be hard to beat in the Grade Two mares’ chase but Billaway could be vulnerable to the up and coming Vaucelet in Friday’s hunters’ chase.