RACING NEWS:LEOPARDSTOWN'S authorities are optimistic about beating the latest cold snap and staging Sunday's BHP Insurance Irish Champion Hurdle card, despite parts of the course being frozen yesterday.
Night-time temperatures left shaded parts of the track unraceable throughout yesterday, provoking fears for Sunday’s prestigious Grade One card.
However, Leopardstown manager Tom Burke was reassured by a weather forecast for the next 48 hours, and no contingency plans along the lines of what happened at the track during the snow-hit Christmas festival over three weeks ago are in place.
“We are being told that day-time temperatures on Saturday and Sunday will rise to about five or six degrees,” he said. “There is also a chance of some cloud cover here on Friday night, which would help. We are optimistic about racing going ahead. If the forecast is correct we should be fine.”
On Wednesday, the Thyestes card scheduled for Gowran yesterday was cancelled due to the threat of frost. That programme was rescheduled for tomorrow.
“There are shaded areas on both tracks that are frozen. They are in spots all round the course,” Burke added. “The ground is soft here at the moment and I wouldn’t imagine much change for Sunday. There isn’t any real drying.”
Nevertheless, the connections of former Champion Hurdle winner Sublimity are looking forward to Sunday’s big race, and trainer Rob Hennessy isn’t ruling out a final hurrah at Leopardstown by the popular veteran.
The 2007 Champion Hurdle winner is now 11, but he secured his first victory in two years at Cork earlier in the month and Hennessy reports that that success has transformed Sublimity in his work since.
“He’s been really buzzed up after it and it’s like he’s a different horse since,” Hennessy said. “He’s getting older, like all of us, but he is in 100 per cent form and it looks like the ground is going to be in his favour.”
Sublimity is a proven Grade One winner around Leopardstown’s two-mile circuit and finished third to Solwhit in last year’s Irish Champion. He was also fourth to old rival Brave Inca, the horse he memorably beat in Cheltenham’s championship four years ago, in 2009.
On Sunday he will have to concede at least four years to his rivals, which are due to include Solwhit again and the hot favourite Hurricane Fly, who looks to dominate a small, but select, field in the €110,000 feature.
“The ground drying out a bit gives us more of a chance,” Hennessy said. “We know Hurricane Fly and Solwhit go on heavy ground, but this will probably be the best ground we’ve had in a long time.
“We’ll probably tack around at the back, keep an eye on things and then try and use his one burst after the last. He is older now so you don’t know how he’ll do, but there’s 10 grand for third and that’s not to be sniffed at.”
Sunday will be Sublimity’s 34th start and he is chasing a 10th victory. At 11, though, time is drawing to a close on his racing career.
“It’s too early to say if this will be his last season. After he got an injury last year we thought that was it, but he has come back so well you would think he’ll have another year in him.
“He’s in great old order, so it’s hard to know,” Hennessy reported.
Stud owner William Flood has been appointed Senior Steward of the Irish National Hunt Steeplechase Committee for the second time. Flood previously held the position from 2004-06. Michael Hickey has been appointed Deputy Senior Steward of the INHSC.
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