IT'S a big week for us at Commonstown as the fantastic five day Punchestown Festival gets underway.
We have plenty of horses entered and we’ll finalise plans for a lot of them as week goes on. It’s just down the road from us and it’s great as Nicky (Henderson) will stay here for a couple of day and he treats it like a mini end of season break.
The horse that I'm most looking forward to running is Supasundae in Friday’s Champion Hurdle and Punchestown have to be commended on how much they have improved facilities over the last few years.
It hasn’t been easy, but the owners and trainer’s restaurant is as good as you’ll get anywhere and they make a real effort to make sure that everyone enjoys themselves.
I’d encourage as many racing fans to make their way to Punchestown this week, as there will be a great atmosphere there.
Rachael Blackmore has enjoyed a stellar season, but there have been lots of highlights and Willie will be Champion Trainer. Paul Townend has been riding great all season and he deserves to be crowned Champion Jockey.
We’ve had a very good season with €1.2 million won at home and we’ve trained a lot of winners (46) and Magic Of Light has won a stack of prizemoney in England. Hopefully we can add to that tally this week.
We start off the festival with three runners and here are my thoughts on them.
5.05pm
Papal Pearl (Luke McGuinness)
She is a nice filly and has run two solid races for us and I think that bit of experience will be a big help to her in a race where the majority of the runners are debutants. She will appreciate the decent ground and she ran well in a listed bumper the last day at Fairyhouse and we are putting a tongue tie on her and I think that will help her. This race has a great roll of honour and has been won by the likes of Hardy Eustace, Newmill and more recently by Petit Mouchoir. We like our filly, but you could bump into something pretty useful in this race. She’ll take her chance and we’ll see how she gets on.
7.15pm
Fiveallin (Luke McGuinness)
He comes here on the back of two good runs over hurdles and again, that experience will be a help in a race where so many have yet to run. Our horse has improved – whether he is good enough to win a race like this, I am not sure, but he has been working nicely at home and I’d be expecting a good run from him.
Jungle Junction (Finny Maguire)
He has had just the one run on soft ground at Naas. That race hasn’t worked out all that well, but it was an encouraging run nonetheless by our horse. He has gotten stronger since and I’ve been happy with him on the lead up to this race and the likely good ground will be fine for him.
