AUTEUIL SATURDAY

5.10 PRIX QUESTARABAD

(HURDLE) (GRADE 3)

(4YO) 2M 3½F

FRESH from notching his 3,000th winner during the week, Willie Mullins makes an eight-strong raid on Auteuil on Saturday evening

Mullins has won the €125,000 Grade 3 Prix Questarabad (over the same distance as the Prix La Barka but for four-year-olds) four times and if you fancy him to make it five on Saturday, be careful, as all three of his runners in a seven-strong field are owned by Jared Sullivan so will be coupled in local PMU tote betting pools.

This race is a re-run of the Prix Alain du Breil over this course and distance three weeks ago when the Guillaume Macaire-trained pair of Tunis and Master Dino finished second and third, with Mullins’s Msassa 15 lengths behind Tunis in sixth and the hard-pulling Saglawy even further adrift in ninth.

The Irish visitors are now better off at the weights, to the tune of 9lbs in Msassa’s case, while Saglawy finished in front of his stablemate at Punchestown.

The other Mullins hope is the front-runner, Stormy Ireland, good winner of a listed mares’ hurdle at Killarney last month but not always the safest of jumpers.

Tunis and Master Dino have met a barely credible 10 times already, with the score 8-2 in Tunis’ favour.

He may maintain bragging rights in the Macaire yard here but, in receipt of 7lbs and provided he settles better, Saglawy may prove just too strong.

Selection: SAGLAWY

Next best: Tunis

5.45 PRIX LA BARKA (HURDLE) (GRADE 2) (5YO+) 2M 3½F

Willie Mullins bids for a third straight triumph (and fifth in seventh years) in the Prix La Barka, a €175,000 Grade 2 hurdle run over two miles and three and a half furlongs.

Those statistics need qualification, as the La Barka race conditions have changed since last year.

Not only is it now over two furlongs shorter, it has moved back three weeks in the calendar to make it a consolation race for the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil, rather than a prep race as it was in the past.

Mullins saddles five of the 13 runners this time around, including Bapaume, runner-up in the Grande Course de Haies over an extra three-quarters of a mile three weeks ago, and Shaneshill, who won this last year but will be running over his shortest hurdling trip since chasing home Douvan in the Supreme Novices’ at Cheltenham in 2015.

His other combatants are the Grande Course de Haies sixth, Yorkhill, the Coral Cup hero, Bleu Berry, and the mare, Asthuria, who is returning to hurdles after a season of chasing which saw her finish third to Footpad in a Grade 1 at the Punchestown Festival.

The home team is led by two. Firstly, Alex de Larredya, who finished two lengths behind Bapaume when fourth in the Grande Course de Haies but is now 7lbs worse off owing to his shock downing of De Bon Coeur in the Grade 2 Prix Leon Rambaud back in April.

The other is the injury-plagued Le Grand Luce, who missed the whole of 2015 and 2017 but has twice finished second to Mullins representatives in this race (Thousand Stars in 2014 and Un De Sceaux two years later).

It is hard to choose between the Closutton quintet. Jockey bookings suggest that the trainer himself thinks Bapaume, now ridden by Paul Townend, may hold the best chance though he had a hard race last time and this will be much more of a speed test.

So maybe it is worth chancing Asthuria, who runs in the George Creighton silks made famous by Hurricane Fly and is now partnered by Jacques Ricqou, who was aboard Bapaume three weeks ago.

Selection: ASTHURIA

Next best: Bapaume