Paddy’s Rewards Club Chase (Grade 1)

YOU would have received quite the odds pre-Christmas that Willie Mullins’ first winner at Leopardstown would have to wait until the second day, on race 10 of the festival, but he got off the mark courtesy of much-improved mare Dinoblue in the Grade 1 Paddy’s Rewards Club Chase.

Only five went to post for the €125,000 contest, and the six-year-old winner was a little uneasy in the market at 9/4, with Captain Guinness sent off the 6/4 favourite as he attempted to win his first Grade 1 at the 12th time of asking.

Gentleman De Mee appeared to set decent fractions on rain-softened ground as he returned from a 246-day layoff and ran with credit under Paul Townend. The combination of soft ground and a strongly-run race might have taken Captain Guinness out of his comfort zone and he was pulled up when well beaten before the second last. However, he was also found to be clinically abnormal post race.

Dinoblue always had Gentleman De Mee in her sights and kept going resolutely to run out a seven-and-a-half-length winner over her stablemate, while Saint Roi was never in the race but completed to earn his share of the prize money. J.P. McManus and Mullins were responsible for the only three finishers.

Major improver

The winner has been on a real progressive run, going from being second in last season’s Grand Annual Handicap Chase at Cheltenham to now completing a fourth win on the bounce - and a first at the highest level.

Mullins said: “Gentleman De Mee set a great pace, jumped fantastic, and I wondered at one stage would she be able to stay jumping with him, but she held her jumping together and when she took a blow she was still galloping.

“She’s improving all the time. She missed the last two at Cheltenham last season and other than that I thought she’d have been right there. She looks a real decent mare, and she has stepped up from her novice company to Grade 1 class, so I’m delighted with that.”

On having to wait until later than usual to register his first Leopardstown winner of the festive period, he added: “We’ve had a few disappointments here at Leopardstown but they’re going well in Limerick, and I don’t know what the difference is. That’s the way it goes, and I had nothing at Leopardstown on December 26th that was unlucky.”

Dinoblue was trimmed to the general 5/2 favourite (from 7/2) for the Mrs Paddy Power Mares’ Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.