Willie Mullins’ unbeaten Anzadam could take on Constitution Hill in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on 29 November.<\/p>\n
The five-year-old missed the major spring festivals last season after sustaining an injury when winning at Naas but is back in rude health now, with Mullins keen to keep him apart from his stablemate and fellow Joe and Marie Donnelly-owned runner State Man, who is bound for the Morgiana Hurdle.<\/p>\n
“Anzadam looks to have enough potential to go down the Champion Hurdle route,” said Mullins.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s been little bits of bother with him but this year everything has been good. He has the ability but sometimes his training schedule gets interrupted.<\/p>\n
“If I can get a clear run into him, I think we\u2019re looking at going for the Fighting Fifth with him. Like State Man he\u2019s owned by Joe and Marie Donnelly and there seems little point in both of them going for the Morgiana.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s more to keep an owners\u2019 horses apart than looking at the championship, but obviously that\u2019s no harm either.”<\/p>\n
As for State Man, who fell with the Champion Hurdle at his mercy before winning well at Punchestown, Mullins said: “State Man was just unlucky at Cheltenham.<\/p>\n
“He showed every one of us what Paul (Townend) had been saying all along, it had never entered his head not to ride him even if Lossiemouth had run (in the Champion Hurdle). He had State Man way ahead, which probably was hard to see in the evidence of his runs but he\u2019s just been lazy until we changed tack (cheekpieces). We\u2019ll keep it similar with him.”<\/p>\n
Also in the Donnelly colours is Salvator Mundi, an impressive Aintree winner.<\/p>\n
“I think Salvator Mundi has the ability to be a Champion Hurdle horse too but as they have Anzadam and State Man, I\u2019m going to go over fences with him and it might teach him to settle better,” said Mullins.<\/p>\n
“He shows more at home than he has on the track. Maybe fences will bring that out, he could be a huge player.”<\/p>\n
\n
Lossiemouth was the subject of much debate last year when, having been mooted for the Champion Hurdle all season, she was rerouted to the Mares\u2019 Hurdle which she won in style.<\/p>\n
“I imagine Lossiemouth will start in the Hatton\u2019s Grace then after that you\u2019ll have to guess as I don\u2019t think I want to get into the same hassle we had last year, the way it worked out,” said Mullins.<\/p>\n
“She\u2019ll tell us after the Hatton\u2019s Grace but she\u2019d look a hot order for the Mares\u2019 Hurdle.”<\/p>\n
Albert Bartlett winner Jasmin De Vaux\u2019s immediate plans are still undecided but Mullins could be leaning towards staying over the smaller obstacles.<\/p>\n
Mullins explained: “I haven\u2019t decided on Jasmin De Vaux yet and looking how he jumped last year, you wouldn\u2019t immediately go novice chasing.<\/p>\n
“In his favour when we went out in trip he was a lot better. He might have more respect for fences but looking back at his point, he wasn\u2019t a natural that day.”<\/p>\n
Mullins also gave favourable mention to dual Grade One bumper winner Bambino Fever, who he thinks may tackle open company.<\/p>\n
He added: “On the hurdling front there\u2019s Bambino Fever who won the Bumper, could she be good enough to even go against the boys in the top novice hurdles rather than just go down the mares hurdle route?<\/p>\n
“She\u2019s got a huge engine and is a lovely big mare. I\u2019m always a believer to look at the races you can win rather than be an unlucky loser so I\u2019d imagine we\u2019ll go down the mares route, but if she looks like she needs a trip we could go to the Ballymore. I\u2019d be hard pressed to think of a mare better than her.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willie Mullins’ unbeaten Anzadam could take on Constitution Hill in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on 29…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-186416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}