WE might be light on quantity in terms of this weekend’s racing programme but the action is surely bound to be informative - particularly when it comes to Sunday’s card at Punchestown that features two graded contests.
A glimpse at the roll of honour of the Grade 3 Sky Bet, For The Fans Novice Chase (12.55) gives an indication of the horsepower that can emerge from this extended-two-mile-and-three-furlong prize (registered as the Killiney Novice Chase).
In a little more than the last dozen years, the race’s winners include Sir Des Champs, Djakadam, Vautour, Killultagh Vic, Yorkhill, Envoi Allen, Bob Olinger, Impervious and Spillane’s Tower.
As for the feature Grade 2 Sky Bet Club Moscow Flyer Novice Hurdle (2.25), try this selection of past winners on for size: Kicking King, Mikael D’Haguenet, Vautour, Douvan, Min, Any Second Now, Impaire Et Passe and Mystical Power. The race often serves up a heavy-hitter for the major spring festivals.
Willie Mullins is expected to saddle the favourite in both contests, with Lecky Watson heading the early market for the Killiney. Fourth in the 2023 Champion bumper before becoming a Grade 1-placed novice hurdler last season (also fifth in the Albert Bartlett), the proven stayer showed a nice aptitude for fences when beating last year’s Supreme Novices’ Hurdle hero Slade Steel in a beginners’ chase at Naas four weeks ago.
The Valirann seven-year-old, priced between 14/1 and 25/1 for the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase at Cheltenham, coped with dropping back to two and a half miles last time and ought to be well suited to the demands of this test at Punchestown.
Lecky Watson carries the red and white silks of the Slaneyville Syndicate, which has managed to unearth a high-class jumper or two quite regularly with Willie Mullins in recent seasons. From big-handicap specialist Total Recall to back-to-back Bobbyjo Chase scorer Acapella Bourgeois, Lar Byrne and his siblings have been savouring their latest expedition to the big meetings with Lecky Watson
“He’s playing with the big boys again this season and we’ll soon find out if he’s good enough,” Byrne told The Irish Field.
Chasing type
“He’s a nice horse, a little bit headstrong but we know he likes to be out in front. He showed a real appetite for his fences at Naas. We always said from the start that whatever he did early on was a bonus before he went chasing. If he can hopefully stay sound, fingers crossed there should be a right bit of fun to be gotten out of him going forward.
“He mixed it with all the best novices in his type of category last season over hurdles and never disgraced himself. Even when he was second to Slade Steel at Navan last season [with Cheltenham winner Better Days Ahead behind in fourth], Paul [Townend] was raging that he didn’t win. Paul told us that he hung onto him for too long but again gave us confidence with that run when going out against Slade Steel at Naas the last day.”
As part of a big weekend for the Mullins-trained novices over hurdles and fences, ante-post supporters of Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle favourite Salvator Mundi will get a chance to see what he’s made of in a higher grade when tackling the Moscow Flyer on Sunday.
Absent since a 62-length cakewalk at Tipperary in May, bookmakers suggest his biggest danger comes from within his own yard in the shape of Kel Histoire. The reapplication of a tongue-tie to Salvator Mundi couldn’t exactly be viewed as a positive, though.