Racing Punchestown Preview: Today's Heineken Gold Cup is the most valuable prize of the Punchestown festival but if Beef Or Salmon can win it then an entirely different race will open up.
Beef Or Salmon's trainer Michael Hourigan currently trails Noel Meade by just under €120,000 in total prize money for the season in the trainers championship so the €108,000 first prize for the Heineken could be crucial.
Meade of course has Beef Or Salmon's big rival Harbour Pilot and the Gold Cup third could wrap up the title for his trainer if managing to win for the first time in over two years.
Hourigan for his part was yesterday playing down the race for the championship and instead concentrated on issuing a reassuring bulletin about his stable star.
Beef Or Salmon was a running on fourth in the Gold Cup and could be better suited to the ground than the mud-loving Harbour Pilot.
"There will be no ifs or buts about the going," assured Hourigan. "He was back in work less than a week after the Gold Cup and we've had no interruptions or hiccups since."
Hourigan's money total for the season is just over €1.1 million with Meade on over €1.2 million and Willie Mullins just a couple of thousand behind Hourigan in an intriguing end of season struggle.
However, Hourigan said: "If it happens, it happens but I would need to win everything and the others would want to be only placed. My issue this season was to go over the million mark for a second season in a row and that's the only record I want."
The potential spanner in the works is last year's winner First Gold from France who comes here on the back of a Gold Cup fifth and a second to Tiutchev at Liverpool.
Mullins has his own interest with the novice Rule Supreme, who was fifth to Puntal at Sandown only four days ago. However, off an uninterrupted preparation, Beef Or Salmon could be the safest option.
The Willie Mullins team look sure to play a significant role throughout the afternoon with a particularly strong interest in the Grade One Paddy Power bumper.
The Co Carlow trainer runs three in this including Knocknabooly who proved such a disappointment at Cheltenham.
From appearing to be running away on the run down the hill, the Gowran winner's chance disappeared dramatically up the hill as Total Enjoyment powered clear.
Behind them all was the loose Blazing Liss who fell at the top of the hill.
With no ill-effects from that, the mare should prove a major threat today while Best Mate's sister Sidalcea is on a recovery mission after a pre-Cheltenham flop at Limerick.
But before Cheltenham there was no disguising the regard in which Knocknabooly was held by the Mullins camp and on this track he can start to show why.
Arch Stanton has been hard to win with but on his rating, and a runner-up placing to Dawn Invasion at Fairyhouse last time, the Mullins horse is difficult to oppose in the novice hurdle.
Ruby Walsh has chosen to ride Man On The Nile for Mullins in the four-year-old conditions hurdle and the selection looks significant.
It's over a year and a half since Bennie's Pride ran over hurdles but he goes now in the three-mile handicap and this smart chaser looks one to keep an eye on.
His hurdles mark is significantly lower than what he has been running to over fences and he looks an each way proposition.
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