Patrick Mullins was very taken by the performance of Fun Fun Fun at Naas on Sunday.
He was aboard Simon Munir and Isaac Souede’s charge for her winning debut over fences in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Mares Beginners Chase and the seven-year-old holds a special place in his affections, the jockey having bred her too.
He told Sporting Life: “She was fantastic. Simon and Isaac kindly let me ride her because I’d bred her and sold her to them. I said to them it’s unusual for someone to get the chance to win a bumper, hurdle and a chase on a horse, particularly one they’ve bred.
"It was nice to get that hat-trick up. I think I’ve only done it on one horse before, Perfect Gentleman a few years ago.
“Her pedigree is all chasing, it’s The Listener, Dooneys Gate, Yorkhill, but when I showed her to Simon I said ‘look, she’s not very big, she might not jump a fence’, but when we schooled her she showed us she's brave and strong enough to do it and has the scope too.
"She jumped fantastic on Sunday and showed she could possibly make a better chaser than a hurdler. The fences help settle her, there are more obstacles to jump over fences and she’s so good at them, that will be a big advantage to her."
Ile Atlantique is another Closutton inmate promising to make a splash over the larger obstacles having claimed the scalps of Firefox and Inthepocket in the Racing Post Novice Chase on the same card.
"He’d been nosed out of it twice at Naas before, once in a bumper under me and then in the Lawlors last year with Paul. We were slightly disappointed with how his bumper and novice hurdle seasons had gone, he never quite lived up to what we were seeing at home,” Mullins explained.
“I think the tongue strap has been a big help to him, fences are a big help, more jumping is an advantage to him, and maybe coming back to two miles too.
"We were trying to stretch him out but he has a very high cruising speed and maybe over two that’s the way to ride him.”
The Lawlor’s Of Naas eluded the Mullins team this time around but the assistant trainer was pleased with the spin he got from Supersundae in second.
“I thought he ran a cracker. They went a good gallop, but I was keen for the first mile-and-a-half and ideally you’d like him to settle better earlier on. I got the position I wanted early but ended up having to drop back then behind Sam (Ewing on winner The Yellow Clay) because I was running too keen and needed him to drop it if we were going to get home,” Mullins said.
“At the back of the third last, he’s taken a blow and that’s when Sam has chosen to attack and they had the advantage of a few runs. My fella needed to wing the last to have any chance of winning and he’s knocked it down, but he was just getting tired on what was essentially his first run of the season.
"Next time out, with that run under his belt, you’d like to think he will close the gap significantly.”
Disappointment of the race was stablemate Jasmin De Vaux, the 11/8 favourite having finished a well beaten fourth.
Mullins feels he was just below-par on the day.
“I don’t think his jumping was the reason he ran as he ran. I thought he jumped relatively well early on but was very slow at the fifth last, but I still think he ran below par from there,” he said.
“I thought his jumping was better than it was at Navan and think it will be better again the next day but I don’t think he showed up on Sunday for whatever reason.
“I wouldn’t write him off just yet but from what we’re seeing at the moment, he’s probably not going to be as good a horse over hurdles as he was in bumpers because the jumps aren’t speeding him up as such.”
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