Heart Wood is the headline Irish act on day two of the Aintree festival and will encounter perhaps his ideal scenario in the featured JCB Melling Chase.
Henry de Bromhead’s star finally secured the Grade One spotlight with a dominant 10-length success in last month’s Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham.
Runner-up to Fact To File in the same race a year previously, it was a first top-flight success for an admirable performer used to mixing it with other star names such as Gaelic Warrior and Galopin Des Champs in recent seasons.
The accumulated evidence points to 2½ miles on decent ground being his optimum conditions, which makes Friday’s £250,000 (€287,000) feature look tailor-made for him.
READ MORE
That Heart Wood is the main Irish player on the eve of Saturday’s Grand National underlines perhaps how the rest of Liverpool’s festival action this week isn’t as much of a priority for top names from this country as in other years.
A dozen of the 28 Irish-trained runners on Friday feature in the Topham over the big National fences. Three of them are trained by Willie Mullins, who has just a single other starter, Gold Dancer, in the first of the four Grade One prizes up for grabs.
Gordon Elliott’s only two starters are in the Topham, and his number one jockey Jack Kennedy isn’t even at Aintree on Friday, opting instead for a handful of rides at Wexford. Kennedy leads Heart Wood’s rider Darragh O’Keeffe 97-90 in the race to be champion jockey in Ireland.
Heart Wood is a top-class ride to relish for the Cork jockey and his clash with the top English hope Grey Dawning is one to look forward to. Having finished fourth in the Gold Cup, Grey Dawning drops back six furlongs in trip and will have first-time cheekpieces to sharpen him up.
Heart Wood is officially top-rated in the race on a career-high mark of 168 but Grey Dawning isn’t next best of figures. That’s the other Irish hope Solness, who for the first time in almost 18 months is raced over further than the minimum trip.
Since then, he has turned into a top-flight two-mile operator able to dominate from the front. Joseph O’Brien considered a Topham tilt but runs him in the Melling instead. On decent ground, around the tight bends, and not having run since the Dublin Racing Festival, a fresh Solness could prove hard to peg back.
Gold Dancer is top-rated in the William Hill Mildmay Chase and should relish the ground conditions. On all evidence he isn’t at the peak of the Mullins novice team this season and over the trip Regent’s Stroll could reverse placings with him from Cheltenham.
“He jumped well [at Cheltenham] and looked like for the first time ever he wanted three miles. He’s dead relaxed now. Decent ground suits him well, so it’d be nice to think he can do what Caldwell Potter did last year,” Regent’s Stroll’s trainer Paul Nicholls said.
Eric McNamara’s Starting Fifteen is the sole Irish hope in the two-mile novice hurdle, where Cheltenham form suggests the Supreme runner-up Sober Glory should step up to the top level.
Gavin Cromwell runs three in the Topham, in which last year’s winner Gentleman De Mee lines up again. Conor Stone-Walsh takes a valuable 3lb off the Cheltenham runner-up Will The Wise and he might prove best. Dalston Lad should be a fresh horse for the Grade One Sefton Novices’ Hurdle.
Brian O’Connor’s Aintree day two tips
- 1.45pm Jazzy Matty
- 2.20pm Regent’s Stroll
- 2.55pm Sober Glory
- 3.30pm Solness
- 4.05pm Will The Wise
- 4.40pm Dalston Lad
- 5.15pm Pourquoi Pas Papa
