Whiteout can wipe out frustration for Patrick Mullins

Patrick Mullins has been Ireland's record-breaking champion amateur jockey for the last eight years, but Whiteout could earn herself a special place in his heart should she land Galway's Day One festival highlight.

Under its various guises over the years, the Connacht Hotel Handicap, has always been a prized objective for this country’s top amateurs, yet it has remained frustratingly elusive to Mullins.

Ballyhaunis’s third in 2010 is the nearest the 25-year-old rider has come to winning but a rise in the weights means he gets the chance to team up with Whiteout, one of two runners along with Wood Breizh, for Mullins’s, father, Willie.

Impressive

The latter won impressively at Tipperary earlier this month but Whiteout, a winner of one of her five starts on the level in France, looks interesting off a mark of 80 on her first flat start for Mullins Snr.

Tony Martin will be triple-handed in his bid for three in a row in this race and Steven Clements, who rode Edeymi and Quick Jack, will be on board the stalwart performer Ted Veale.

Nina Carberry’s mount Eshtiaal is one of Gordon Elliott’s three runners and comes here on the back of an impressive win at York last time. Whiteout’s biggest threat though may come from the opposite end of the handicap since Modem should step up significantly for his narrow comeback victory in Killarney last time.

However despite championships, a record tally of 73 winners in a year, and half a dozen Grade 1's on stars such as Champagne Fever, the start of Galway 2015 could turn out to be especially memorable for Patrick Mullins.