Rich Ricci reflects on loss of Faugheen and Min

Owner Rich Ricci is trying to put into context the loss of Faugheen and Min from his Cheltenham Festival team.

While both horses are still in contention to return to the track in the spring, the outlook for Annie Power is not as positive.

Ricci said in his RTE Racing blog: “In any normal year, to lose either Faugheen or Min from your Cheltenham team would be hard to take.

“But to lose both, and on the back of what has been an attritional few weeks, was particularly galling.

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“Right now we’ve got to figure out what to do with the rest of the season and the only one we have on the team with a poor prognosis in terms of the rest of the campaign is Annie Power.

“Both Faugheen and Min should be able to compete later in the spring, so when you look at the bright side, yesterday’s bolt from the blue is just really bad news in a Cheltenham Festival context, no worse than that.

“In Faugheen’s case, given the race we wanted him to line up for at Cheltenham would have been so competitive, you would really want to be getting stuck into him in training now, and that isn’t possible.

“Likewise with Min.”