Willie Mullins tempted to run Limini in Cheltenham Festival’s Champion Hurdle

Limini, who was a 50-1 chance for next month’s Champion Hurdle less than a week ago, seems increasingly likely to take her chance in the race after Willie Mullins, her trainer, said here on Monday that “we might take a punt with her” in the feature event on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival.

Mullins took the same race last season with a late substitute, when the mare Annie Power stepped in to replace Faugheen, the champion over timber in 2015, and she won by four-and-a-half lengths. With both Annie Power and Faugheen now sidelined, and Yorkhill, last year’s Neptune Novice Hurdle winner, running over fences, Limini suddenly appears to be Mullins’s best chance of winning the Champion Hurdle for the fifth time in the past seven years.

Limini won the novice event for mares at last year’s Festival and emerged as a possible Champion Hurdle contender when she beat Apple’s Jade in a Listed event at Punchestown last Wednesday on her first start since April 2016. She is now priced at around 6-1 for the Champion, and is also quoted at 7-2 for the Mares’ Hurdle the same day, for which her stable companion Vroum Vroum Mag is 6-4 favourite.

“A lot depends on how Vroum Vroum Mag goes between now and then, but if Limini is fine and sparkling I think we might take a punt with her,” Mullins said.

“I went to Punchestown [last week] thinking, am I mad going there? As we got closer I was thinking that Apple’s Jade is not going to make it easy for us, and maybe a hard race three weeks before the Festival would not be good for Limini.

“Everything just fell into place, but what I didn’t think was that Limini would pull out and go past Apple’s Jade without getting a slap, which begs two questions. Have we improved that much, and how was Apple’s Jade, did she run up to her form? If she did, I think we’re well entitled to go for the Champion Hurdle, and Limini didn’t have a hard race and has pulled out of it well.”

Mullins has saddled 15 winners at the past two Cheltenham Festivals alone, and 48 in all since Tourist Attraction got him off the mark at the meeting in the Supreme Novice Hurdle in 1995. He is odds-on to be the Festival’s top trainer once again, for the sixth time in the past seven years, and yet he will arrive at Cheltenham after a series of setbacks this season, including the loss of 60 horses following a dispute with the leading owner Michael O’Leary over training fees.

Several of the horses Mullins lost will be significant opponents for his own runners next month, including Petit Mouchoir, now with Henry de Bromhead, in the Champion Hurdle, and Mullins’s overall team for the meeting is likely to number about 40 runners, down from 61 in 2016 and 54 in 2015.

“People expect a lot from our team and we’re hoping rather than expecting,” Mullins said. “It’s not going to be as big a team as other years, so it’s going to be tougher for us I think. But we’ve had some fantastic years and it goes up and down.

“That’s sport I suppose. Claudio Ranieri is probably thinking the same sort of thing today. But things happen, and you just try to pick up and go on again, and hopefully we have a nice team going over. Going into Christmas, I didn’t dream we were going to have the Christmas we had and I only hope we can work the oracle again for Cheltenham.

“I don’t think you should ever gloat in racing. I’ll be satisfied if I do well from a personal point of view, but you can’t ever be delighted that you beat someone because the next day, they’re going to beat you. I just enjoy my own victories, it’s not because of who you beat.”

Despite the loss of O’Leary’s horses, Mullins was still able to parade a hugely impressive Festival team at his annual pre-Cheltenham media morning on Monday.

The undisputed leader of the pack is Douvan, the long odds-on favourite for the Queen Mother Champion Chase on 15 March, but he will be joined in the West Country by at least half a dozen other probable favourites, giving Mullins the market leader in about a quarter of the meeting’s 28 races.

The race he covets above all others, however, is the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in which has he has saddled the runner-up on six occasions. Djakadam, second in both 2015 and 2016, will return to the race next month as the probable third-favourite behind Cue Card and Native River and Mullins feels the eight-year-old has had an ideal preparation.

“He hasn’t had any setbacks this year, where last year he got a nasty cut when he ran at Cheltenham [in January] and we just had enough time [to get him ready]. This year we’ve had a clear run and a better run to the Gold Cup.

“I think he’s more mature, I think he’s come to the sort of age that you can win a Gold Cup. The first year he was young, the second year he had a bad prep, this year everything is going right.”

Melon in the Supreme Novice Hurdle (the likely mount of Ruby Walsh, according to the trainer), and Yorkhill, in the JLT Novice Chase, are expected to set off as warm favourites, while Mullins also feels that Carter McKay, an impressive winner at Naas earlier this month, has as much quality as any of his eight previous winners of the Champion Bumper.

“He’d been doing nice work at home and I’d have to say it was better than I hoped, but you don’t go expecting performances like that,” Mullins said. “I suppose his performance the other day compares favourably with anything, for me a horse that can win around Naas doing that is a fair machine.”

George Baker ‘stable’

George Baker remains in a stable condition in a Swiss hospital after a fall on the ice at St Moritz on Sunday, the jockey’s brother, Zac, said on Monday. Zac Baker said: “As far as I’m aware, the situation hasn’t changed today. His wife, Nicola, is now there with him while Mum and Dad have stayed at home to look after their baby. He’s still in intensive care but is stable.”

Tuesday’s tips, by Greg Wood

Catterick

2.20 Cafe Au Lait 2.50 Chti Balko 3.20 Halcyon Days (nb) 3.50 Lough Derg Jewel 4.20 Fayette County 4.50 Aengus

Leicester

2.10 D’Nailor 2.40 Belami Des Pictons 3.10 Toby Lerone 3.40 Powerful Symbol 4.10 Jamrham 4.40 The Highlander

Lingfield

2.00 Picansort 2.30 Traveller 3.00 Banditry (nap) 3.30 Mise En Rose 4.00 Attain 4.30 Breakheart