Faugheen, the 2015 Champion Hurdle winner, and Min, a leading contender for the Arkle Trophy, will both miss the Cheltenham Festival next month after Willie Mullins, their trainer, was forced to concede on Monday that neither horse will recover from an injury in time to line up at jumping’s showpiece meeting.
Mullins has dominated the Festival meeting in recent seasons, finishing the week as the leading trainer for the last four years, and five times in the last six. Ireland’s champion trainer has suffered a series of setbacks in the current campaign, however, including the loss of about 60 horses following a dispute with leading owner Michael O’Leary over training fees. Vautour, last year’s Ryanair Chase winner, suffered a fatal injury in November while Annie Power, last year’s Champion Hurdle winner, was ruled out of a defence of her title last month.
She will now be joined on the sidelines by two more leading contenders for championship events. Faugheen was the 5-2 favourite for the Champion Hurdle on Monday morning, while Min was quoted at around 7-2 second-favourite for the Arkle behind Nicky Henderson’s Altior.
Faugheen was ruled out of the defence of the Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown eight days ago with what Mullins hoped was a minor muscle problem, but a more serious injury came to light on Monday. Min also missed an intended engagement on the same card.
“We had hoped Faugheen had just tweaked a muscle, but we’ve had it checked out and it’s a stress fracture,” the trainer said on Monday. “Min has a bruise. Hopefully both will still make the track this season. It’s a real shame with Faugheen, we needed everything to go right and obviously it hasn’t.
“There are options at Fairyhouse [in mid-April] and Punchestown [in late April] for Min, and hopefully he makes one of them, while we’ll try to get Faugheen ready for [the Irish Champion Hurdle at] Punchestown [on 28 April].”
The news that two leading contenders for two-mile events on the Festival’s opening day had both been ruled out caused inevitable upheaval in the ante-post betting, and also prompted speculation about possible changes of plan for other horses in the Mullins yard.
Nicky Henderson’s Buveur D’Air, who took the Contenders Hurdle at Sandown Park on Saturday, is the new favourite for the Champion Hurdle at a top price of 4-1, just ahead of the 5-1 chance Petit Mouchoir, who joined Henry de Bromhead after leaving the Mullins yard following the trainer’s fallout with O’Leary.
Both horses ran well in last season’s Supreme Novice Hurdle, while Buveur D’Air then went on to beat Petit Mouchoir in the Grade One Top Novice Hurdle at Aintree in April. Neither horse, though, managed a win as impressive as that of Mullins’s Yorkhill in the Neptune Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham, a race that has been won by several subsequent Champion Hurdle winners in the last 20 years.
Yorkhill beat Yanworth, who is 11-2 for the Champion Hurdle, by one-and-three-quarter lengths at last year’s Festival, but started the season over fences and had been seen as a contender for either the Arkle Trophy or JLT Novice Chase. Instead, he is now in the unusual position of being quoted as the 5-2 ante-post favourite for the JLT, a 5-1 chance for the Arkle and also at 5-1 for the Champion Hurdle, as the markets anticipate a possible switch back to timber.
Altior, meanwhile, is now generally quoted at around 1-2 for the Arkle Trophy, while Identity Thief, at 16-1, is the first opponent in the betting that seems certain to be aimed at the race.
Today’s tips
Hereford
2.10 Late Shipment 2.40 Gardiners Hill 3.15 Gayebury 3.50 Sparkling River 4.20 Wild West Wind 5.10 Tikkanbar
Newcastle
1.30 Outlaw Torn 2.00 Spirit Of The Vale 2.30 Green Or Black 3.05 Pass The Time 3.40 Eastern Dragon (nb) 4.10 Angelou 4.40 Genres (nap)
Market Rasen
1.50 Domperignon Du Lys 2.20 Little Miss Poet 2.50 Bastien 3.25 Mwaleshi 4.00 Minella Fiveo 4.30 Barel Of Laughs
