Owners Anita and Michael O’Leary (second and third left), with jockey Sam Ewing and trainer Gordon Elliott after Brighterdaysahead won the Neville Hotels Hurdle. Photograph: Damien Eagers/PA
Brighterdaysahead’s emphatic win sends out warning for Cheltenham
Hot favourite State Man well beaten at Leopardstown
Owner Michael O’Leary still to decide on next target
Greg Wood (The Guardian)
A significant potential rival for Constitution Hill in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham emerged on the final day of Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting on the last Sunday of last year, as Brighterdaysahead, a five-year-old mare trained by Gordon Elliott, came home 30 lengths clear of her rivals in the Grade One Neville Hotels Hurdle, with State Man, the reigning champion over timber, only third in a race that he had won for the past two seasons.
She was ridden by the new Irish jockey sensation, Sam Ewing.
State Man set off as the 4-9 favourite for the race, despite having had his first defeat in a completed start in Ireland when finishing a close second behind Brighterdaysahead at Punchestown in November. While Brighterdaysahead had made her own running there, however, she had a pacemaker for the rematch in her stable companion, King Of Kingsfield, and the pair steadily built a lead of about a dozen lengths by halfway.
State Man never threatened to make significant inroads into the leaders’ advantage, and after Sam Ewing sent Brighterdaysahead into the lead two out she pulled further clear all the way to the line.
Willie Mullins’s runner clearly failed to run anywhere close to his best form – “I was in trouble from an early stage and never really travelling,” Paul Townend, his rider, said – but Brighterdaysahead’s time of 3min 45.2sec confirmed the visual impression of her wide-margin win.
A long list of outstanding two-mile hurdlers, including Hurricane Fly, Honeysuckle, Istabraq, Sizing Europe and Faugheen, all failed to get within four seconds of that mark at Leopardstown, while the highly competitive two-mile handicap hurdle on Friday, won by Enniskerry under 11st 5lb, was 8.6sec slower.
Brighterdaysahead’s success had an understandable effect on the ante-post betting for the Champion Hurdle, and she is now the 5-1 joint second-favourite for the feature event on day one of the festival meeting together with Lossiemouth, behind Constitution Hill, the unbeaten winner of the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton a few days before, at 8-11.
Her festival target, however, remained undecided with the Mares’ Hurdle on the same card also under serious consideration according to Michael O’Leary, Brighterdaysahead’s owner.
Brrigherdayshead is the 13-8 favourite for the mares’ event, behind Lossiemouth (15-8), who was the runner-up behind Constitution Hill at Kempton.
Owners Anita and Michael O’Leary (second and third left), with jockey Sam Ewing and trainer Gordon Elliott after Brighterdaysahead won the Neville Hotels Hurdle. Photograph: Damien Eagers/PA
“She was great, but King Of Kingsfield did the hard work as well,” O’Leary said. “Eddie [O’Leary, the owner’s brother and racing manager] called me a couple of years ago and said there’s a mare that we have to buy [and] Gordon has loved her since he got her home, so it’s down to the two of them. I’d go for the Mares’ Hurdle but we’ll have a chat about it closer to Cheltenham, but ultimately Gordon and Eddie will probably decide and I’ll be overruled.”
Brighterdaysahead’s victory was the 100th Grade One success of her trainer’s career, and came on the same afternoon as Elliott’s 2,000th National Hunt winner in Ireland.
“I was nervous watching it as I was wondering if they were going too fast,” Elliott said. “We’ve always thought the world of her and we’re going to enjoy today, but I wanted to give a word to [injured stable jockey] Jack Kennedy, as she’s his mare and he’ll be back riding all these horses once he’s fit.
