NEWS ROUND-UP:PSYCHO MAY be the main Irish hope for Saturday's €166,000 Totesport Trophy at Newbury but another horse who ran in Leopardstown's Pierse Hurdle, Dancing Tornado, is also in line to take his chance.
Pyscho, as low as 7 to 1 for the big handicap, was unluckily beaten by Penny’s Bill a month ago but Co Limerick trainer Michael Hourigan is convinced that Dancing Tornado can show up better at Newbury than he did at Leopardstown where he finished fifth.
“It was a good run but Tony (McCoy) said he just didn’t gallop into the wind and rain,” Hourigan said yesterday. “I hope he can run a big race on Saturday. It is going to be competitive which should suit him along with a good gallop. He will be travelling on Thursday. He could go to Cheltenham afterwards for the County Hurdle.”
Dancing Tornado is as low as 16 to 1 to score for his owner JP McManus. Last season’s County Hurdle winner Silver Jaro is an outsider in ante-post betting for Saturday’s race but trainer Tom Hogan might not run his stable star if the topweights, Sentry Duty and Straw Bear, don’t take part.
Both of those horses have 11st 12lb in the handicap with Silver Jaro currently on 10st 10lb and Hogan said yesterday: “A rise in the weights wouldn’t suit him and if the two topweights come out we won’t run.”
Willie Mullins’s Deutschland and Sky Hall from the Noel Meade yard are other Irish possibles but it is the home-trained Numide who is the 6 to 1 favourite.
The Champion Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival in April will be sponsored by Rabobank who announced yesterday that the race will no longer be known as the ACC Bank Champion Hurdle.
