Leading Champion Bumper contender Maughreen has been ruled out of the Cheltenham Festival after suffering a minor setback.
The daughter of Walk In The Park is bred to be smart, being out of a half-sister to the brilliant Faugheen, and could not have been more impressive when scoring by 11 lengths on her racecourse debut at Punchestown in January.
The five-year-old was disputing favouritism with some bookmakers to provide trainer Willie Mullins with a 13th Champion Bumper success at Prestbury Park – and while she will not be making the trip across the Irish Sea, connections are hopeful she will make a full recovery.
James Fenton, racing manager for her Closutton Racing Club owners, said: “The team at Willie’s just copped that she wasn’t moving correctly after a piece of work during the week, we’ve done a bit of investigating to see what was going on and we caught something very small.
“She’s by no means in any danger or anything like that, it’s an injury that I would take every day of the week. It’s very minor and the prognosis for it is described as excellent.
“She was going to Cheltenham, that was the plan. I discussed it on Monday night with Willie and a lot of the members had their plane tickets booked and everything, but they’re very understanding as that’s the game we’re in.”
On whether Maughreen could run later in the spring, Fenton added: “It’s up in the air at the moment, but there’s one thing we won’t be doing and that’s putting pressure on her.
“She’ll be well looked after, we’ll get her right and we’ll kick on again. We’ll just have to reassess her after two weeks and I would expect her to make a full recovery.”
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