Punchestown Friday best bets:
4.30 Musical Slave
5.05 Drop The Anchor
The Willie Mullins thread that usually runs through Punchestown week is running as deeply as ever this year so far, and it could go even deeper today, on the final day of the week, the final day of the Irish National Hunt season.
In Concertista, Stormy Ireland and Burning Victory, the champion trainer fields the first three favourites for the Coolmore Kew Gardens Irish EBF Mares Champion Hurdle, with My Sister Sarah in there as back-up, while in the other Grade 1 race on the day, the Ballymore Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle, Haut En Couleurs is vying for favouritism with Triumph Hurdle hero Quilixios. The record of 18 that was posted at the 2018 Festival is in danger.
Brahma Bull is Willie Mullins’ sole representative in the Palmerstown House Pat Taaffe Handicap Chase, and he is a contender on his best form, and he has been well backed already this morning but, at a similar price, MUSICAL SLAVE is more interesting. The Philip Hobbs-trained gelding hasn’t won yet this season, but he has been running well. He finished a close-up fifth on his seasonal debut in a two-and-a-half-mile handicap chase at Newbury’s Ladbrokes Trophy meeting in November that is working out really well, and that was after making a really bad mistake at the first fence and another mistake at the last.
The winner of that race, Clondaw Castle, won Kempton’s big three-mile handicap chase at the end of February and is now rated 8lb higher than he was then, while third-placed Sully D’Oc AA finished second in the Red Rum Chase at Aintree and won a big two-mile handicap chase at Punchestown on Thursday.
Musical Slave unseated his rider in the Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster next time, but he ran better than the bare form suggests at Ascot in February in finishing third behind Captain Chaos and Regal Encore in a three-mile handicap chase. He was weak in the market that day, Richard Johnson chose to ride Jerrysback instead, and his jumping wasn’t overly fluent, but he did well to keep on past Cobolobo to take third place in a race in which the winner raced prominently from early.
The handicapper dropped him by 2lb for that run to a mark of 135, the mark off which he raced in the Kim Muir at Cheltenham last time. He never really got competitive there, the first time that he raced at Cheltenham.
He is down another 7lb in the handicap today to a mark of 128, and that is an attractive mark. It is the mark off which he won a novices’ handicap chase at Exeter on New Year’s Day last year.
As well as that, JP McManus’ horse won the Adare Manor Opportunity Final at the 2019 Punchestown Festival on his only run to date at the track. He obviously likes it at Punchestown, he has good form on the ground, and he stays three miles. He could go well.
DROP THE ANCHOR could also go well at a decent price in the Baroneracing.com Handicap Hurdle 35 minutes later. Pat Fahy’s horse has been in great form this season, winning a handicap hurdle at Listowel in September and landing the Ladbrokes Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown in February.
The form book says that he could only finish seventh last time in the County Hurdle at Cheltenham, but that doesn’t tell the full story. He was just starting to make ground at the top of the home straight when he got squeezed out of it as the winner Belfast Banter and Champagne Gold converged in front of him. He wasn’t travelling as well as the winner at that point, but he is a horse who finds lots for pressure, he stayed on strongly up the hill. He was only beaten a total of three and a half lengths by the winner in the end, and he probably would have finished a fair bit closer than he did if he had had a clear path.
He is stepping back up to two and a half miles today, which could be a positive now. He didn’t really get home in a few attempts over the intermediate distance in the past, but he is finishing off his races really strongly now over two miles and, now as a stronger seven-year-old, he is worth another try at the distance, especially at Punchestown, on start-of-summer ground.
JP McManus’ horse gets to race today off a mark of 143, 3lb lower than his County Hurdle mark, and that gives him a chance. He is a course winner, he is one for two at the course, and we know that the talented Simon Torrens, who has two winners on the board already this week, is top value for his 3lb claim.
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