Willie Mullins was encouraged by Galopin Des Champs’ comeback effort despite only finishing third in Sunday’s Savills Chase.<\/p>\n
The fabulous nine-year-old had won the Leopardstown Grade 1 for the past two seasons, while his overall record at the track stood at a perfect seven from seven on the chase course, but that winning run came to an end after the progressive Affordale Fury galloped his rivals into submission in an eventful renewal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Having disputed the lead early on under Paul Townend and never been far off the pace set by the race-fit winner, Galopin Des Champs<\/a> stuck to his task doggedly and was only beaten three and a quarter lengths in third.<\/p>\n Mullins expects the belated seasonal debut run to do his star good, with a return to Leopardstown for the Irish Gold Cup – a race the horse has won for the past three seasons – firmly on the radar.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very happy with him, he looked like he was going to win it after landing over the second-last,” Mullins reflected on Racing TV<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHe just missed his prep race and that told on him I think going up to the last.<\/p>\n \u201cHe got a breather and still came back after the last. I was happy, disappointed he didn\u2019t win, yes, but I didn\u2019t expect him to win.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was his first run of the season and it\u2019s a tough contest, having a first run.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Paul (Townend) was happy with him, he won\u2019t be swapping him anyhow. That (Irish Gold Cup) would look the plan at the moment.”<\/p>\n Galopin Des Champs’ Grand National-winning stablemate I Am Maximus<\/a> ran a huge race in second at 50\/1 and his trainer feels he was a shade unfortunate after the winner jumped across his line of vision at the last fence.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought he was unlucky,” said Mullins.<\/p>\n “Given a different path from the second-last he might have gone very close. But he ran a cracker.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Sporting LifeSafer gambling<\/p>\n We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.<\/p>\n If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline \/ GamCare<\/a> on 0808 8020 133.<\/p>\n Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org<\/a> and gamblingtherapy.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willie Mullins was encouraged by Galopin Des Champs’ comeback effort despite only finishing third in Sunday’s Savills Chase.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-215724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}