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Waterford, Ireland / WLR
Mar 17, 2021 12:04 PM
The Champion Chase is the feature race on day two of the Cheltenham Festival, where the Irish will look to add to an opening day tally of 5 winners.
Trainer Willie Mullins, who has never won the 2 mile showpiece, saddles the favourite ‘Chacun Pour Soi.
Mullins also has strong claims elsewhere on the card with ‘Monkfish’ in the 3 mile novices chase and ‘Kilcruit’ in the bumper.
The going is good to soft for the first of seven races at 1.20.
Tipperary’s Rachael Blackmore will look for more success in that first race, the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, where she rides the favourite, Bob Olinger for Waterford trainer Henry De Bromhead.
Aidan Coleman riding Put The Kettle On (orange) clears on the way to winning The Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/PA
The Cheltenham hill is where National Hunt’s champions are judged, and the climb to the line found Chacun Pour Soi wanting in the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Wednesday. Instead it was a “mad” mare called Put The Kettle On who rose to the challenge, as she has every time she has raced here, adding the two-mile all-aged championship to her win in the Arkle Trophy for novices 12 months ago.
This was a fourth visit to the Old course at Cheltenham for Put The Kettle On, and a fourth win over track and trip. Henry de Bromhead’s mare led for much of the way but was headed by Chacun Pour Soi, the odds‑on favourite, on the run to the final fence, only to power up the hill as Willie Mullins’s runner visibly faltered.
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Aidan Coleman celebrates the Champion Chase victory.
Image: Dan Abraham/INPHO
Image: Dan Abraham/INPHO
“WE LOVED HAVING them here,” gushed ITV anchor Ed Chamberlin earnestly as the camera shot to the Irish connections isolating-by-nationality at a near-empty Cheltenham.
“They’re so important to the Festival.”
He was neither joking nor doing anything other than afford the warm welcome the British extend to the Irish every Cheltenham – including when it coincides with St Patrick’s Da
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