Mullins keeping options for Prix La Barka open

WILLIE MULLINS is set to continue a long-standing family tradition of raiding the renowned Auteuil track in Paris during the summer.

Ireland’s champion jumps trainer has four entries in this Sunday’s Grade Two Prix La Barka including the Cheltenham festival winner Thousand Stars and the star mare J’y Vole.

The €175,000 race run over almost two and three quarter miles is regarded as a top trial for next month’s French Champion Hurdle, the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil, and is likely to feature the top-rated home hurdler Questarabad.

In the past Mullins has used the Barka to warm up his horses for the Champion itself which he memorably scored back-to-back victories with Nobody Told Me (2003) and Rule Supreme (2004.) The legendary Dawn Run, trained by Mullins’s father, Paddy, won the Barka in 1984 prior to winning the Champion, and was runner-up in it two years later, just a few weeks before she was killed in a fall at the French racing premier jumping course.

As well as J’y Vole and Thousand Stars, Mullins’s other entries this Sunday are Deutschland and Mourad while J’y Vole also has an entry in a €95,000 handicap hurdle on the same card. “I would hope to have runners on Sunday but we won’t decide what we send over until they do some work over the next couple of days,” he said yesterday. “I’d like to see what the French handicapper does with J’y Vole but all four are eligible to travel.” The quartet are all possibles for next month’s Champion Hurdle while Tarla looks like being prepared for the French equivalent of the Triumph Hurdle, the Prix Alain du Breil, at Auteuil next month. Tarla made a winning Irish debut at the Punchestown festival in April and is an entry in a Grade Three at Auteuil on Sunday.

However, Mullins said: “I probably won’t travel this weekend and will prepare her for three weeks time here at home.”

Kevin Prendergast is another Irish trainer who will be on his travels as he is looking at campaigning Recharge abroad after his fine second to Fame And Glory in Sunday’s Tattersalls Gold Cup.

“We might have to travel with him and go abroad. We will look for a Group One where we don’t have to compete against the likes of Fame And Glory. There must be one somewhere for him,” the veteran trainer said yesterday.

“Sunday was probably his best ever run. If Sea The Stars wasn’t around last year, Fame And Glory would have been the star so you’d have to be happy with our horse’s run,” he added.

Prendergast ruled out a trip to the Epsom Oaks for his Moyglare winner Termagant after she finished out of the money in Sunday’s Irish 1,000 Guineas. Afterwards she was found to be in season.

“I wouldn’t totally blame that and maybe the ground was a little bit quick for her,” he said. “The Oaks trip is definitely out now. We will look to step her up in trip, maybe something like the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh.”