RONAN GROOME: Teak tough Teahupoo to provide stern test of Ballyburn’s credentials

Who could ever doubt Willie Mullins when it comes to one of his horses switching discipline? We’re talking about the leading trainer of all time at the Cheltenham Festival who dabbles his hand in the Breeders’ Cup and Royal Ascot meetings, turning jumpers who may not have yet hit their top potential into golden gems on the flat.

However you suspect Mullins will need all of his know-how to get the career of Ballyburn back on track when he moves back to hurdles in the Grade 1 Hatton’s Grace (2.36) at Fairyhouse – feature contest of one of the highlight meetings on the Irish jumps calendar. 

It may be a fallacy to even suggest Ballyburn’s career is off track, but a Grade 1-winning novice chaser would, you suspect, be kept over fences by just about every other trainer in the game. That he reverts back to hurdles now is testament to Mullins’s standard and riches elsewhere in the chasing division, and it must be said, to the standard Ballyburn hit as a novice hurdler – oh so impressive in the nature of his 13-length, power-away win in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle two seasons back.

That performance saw him hit a rating of 163, which prompted Champion Hurdle talk, but now, after a novice chase campaign that seemingly didn’t hit the heights Mullins and Co had hoped for, it’s the Stayers’ Hurdle that could be his ultimate destination.

Ballyburn was never going on his penultimate start in the Brown Advisory at Cheltenham and he was then well held by stablemate Champ Kiely at Punchestown. Again, none of this could be described as anything disgraceful, but a little disappointing nonetheless. The challenge for Mullins is to get Ballyburn back to the novice hurdler who looked so imperious, and to do that having trained him to jump fences all last season, which needless to say, is not the same style you need for jumping hurdles in Grade 1 company.

Today provides the first sighter to this project.

In direct contrast to Ballyburn is his main market rival today Teahupoo, who is exactly what it says on the tin, a rock solid Grade 1 performer, coming to this race for the fourth season in a row, with two wins here already to his name, and his defeat at the hands of Lossiemouth last year readily excused given the steadily run nature of the contest played into the hands of that classy mare.

That he has another chance now to join four other horses who have each won this race three times since 1999 speaks to the nature of this two-and-a-half-mile contest, very much a horses for courses/early season unique event that trainers can target. And Teahupoo is ultimate target horse given his excellent record fresh. The yielding to soft ground will be fine and Elliott will surely have him revved right back up for this contest. That very much makes him the one to beat, and perhaps the odds will reflect that more so towards the off.

Romeo, Romeo

There used to be three Grade 1s on this card, but now there are only two, the other being the Drinmore Novice Chase (2.05), often an excellent contest choc full of last season’s top novice hurdlers. This renewal is very much not that, with only Romeo Coolio fitting the bill.

Gordon Elliott’s gelding came up short in the Supreme (third to Kopek Des Bordes) and at Aintree (second to Salvator Mundi) but there was no shame in either of those performances and he did score a Grade 1 earlier in the season when he won comfortably at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting.

Chasing was probably always going to be his thing. In my previous vocation as a racing journalist, I was working the day he won his bumper at Fairyhouse, and you could genuinely feel the relief from Elliott and the horse’s owners in the winners’ enclosure afterwards – the feeling was that he had a real good one here and it was the first bit of confirmation of that.

He’s been good so far alright, but the hope will be now that he can go to greater heights as a chaser, and he’d probably want to be beating the likes of the Willie Mullins-trained Gold Dancer here, who likely fits in a fair way down the pecking order at Closutton.

A bet in the opener

The opening contest is a lady riders’ handicap chase (12.05) and decent looking betting heat. Local trainer Eddie Cawley loves a winner at his home track so it stands to reason that his Chosen Diamond should be ready to roll here on his seasonal debut but I’m a little surprised to see him in at favourite.

The two on my shortlist were another local horse in the Ian Donoghue-trained Vaureal and Secrecies Of Stone, with slight preference for the latter, trained by Paul Nolan. He fell on his seasonal debut, just as he was fading out of contention at Gowran, and while that isn’t ideal, he got far enough in the race for it to serve what you suspect was the ultimate purpose – to get him fit to come back to this race.

The reason for that inkling is that he was very unlucky here in a race of the exact same kind here at the Easter Festival, unseating his rider Georgie Benson when two lengths to the good at the second last. He can run off 1lb lower now, and I really like the booking of Anna McGuinness to take 7lbs off his back. She already looks fine value for that claim, with eight wins from 66 rides already this term in Ireland, a fine effort.

Supreme clues in Royal Bond 

The Royal Bond (1.35) is the race that has been demoted in grade, having held top billing previously, but now a Grade 2. Love Me Tender is favourite here for Willie Mullins but the mere fact that he has been running through the summer will lead plenty to presume that there he may not even be in the top 10 novice hurdlers at home.

Still, perhaps that shouldn’t deter us, Mullins has won this race with some decidedly average novices in the past – Quick Grabim and Statuaire come to mind – and Love Me Tender has done little wrong thus far.

If there is to be a real star here, perhaps it could be Koktail Brut, who left his bumper form well behind when going right away from a very smart type in that sphere in Colcannon, when the pair dominated the betting and then the race when each having their first run over hurdles at Punchestown. That was pretty impressive and significantly, he is the choice of Jack Kennedy, who could have rode Port Authority, himself a fine winner of a maiden hurdle at Naas to the tune of 17 lengths.

Eachtotheirown and Gameball are another pair of maiden hurdle winners stepping up here, and with the majority of this field quoted for the Supreme Novice Hurdle, hopefully there will be at least one nice performance among them.

McManus duo dominate betting for listed handicap hurdle

The big betting race of the day should perhaps by the two-mile handicap hurdle on the card (3.11) but it’s hard to really get stuck in when you have a pair of J.P. McManus-owned horses (Puturhandstogether and Last Kingdom – opposing again having finished second and first in a listed handicap hurdle at Listowel) at the top of the betting, not least with the apparent second string, favoured at the time of writing.

That’s Puturhandstogether, and in spite of the fact that Mark Walsh rides Last Kingdom, it does make sense that Joseph O’Brien’s gelding is a slight favourite. Yes Last Kingdom beat him in Listowel, but he looked advantaged by the how the way that race panned out, racing closer to a less-than-hectic pace and able to really finish fast from a bit of a headstart. 

Puturhandstogether came from further back and closed right up to within three lengths after the last. Of course, since then he’s only gone and won an Irish Cesarewitch, coffing a cool €324,000, and enhancing his profile further in the process. 

Needless to say the betting will be interesting.

There are lots of interesting profiles in here elsewhere. Zillow has to have a solid chance – a Willie Mullins-trained five-year-old gelding, coming here off both a win on the flat and over hurdles. The latest of those came at Dundalk last month, where he was winning off a mark of 88, when sent off a 17/2 shot. Perhaps he defied expectations that evening and he returns to hurdles now with bundles of scope to improve off a potentially very handy assessment of 125.

Ataboycharlie is also interesting after a very pleasing comeback run to finish third to Sportinthepark at Galway. He is another one trained and owned by Eddie Cawley, so is likely to be primed for this, while Teed Up, is another who is mixing hurdles and flat runs, and wouldn’t be without a chance here. Emmet Mullins’s gelding is usually kept for Galway – amazingly his last six runs over hurdles have come at Ballybrit – so it is somewhat interesting he gets to take his chance today.

Last seen finishing a close up fourth to Winning Smut in the penultimate day feature at the Summer Festival, a drop back down in trip to 2m should suit him here, and he’d be naturally very interesting if supported in the betting closer to the off.

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