Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
COTT TO BE
Wicklow’s impossible to back, attention switches to Camelia
WHILE Wicklow Brave will be the star attraction on the opening day of the Listowel Festival, he’ll be sent off at an unbackable price. And his stable-companion Camelia De Cotte looks a more appealing proposition in the Cheestrings Mares Novice Chase.
The marathon Harvest Festival meeting comprises three jumps cards (tomorrow, Tuesday and Saturday), one flat programme (Monday) and three mixed cards (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday), the more familiar recipe at the North Kerry venue.
Willie Mullins, inset, will be the man to follow in the week’s National Hunt action and will saddle three of the 10 runners for the mares novice chase, with Camelia De Cottee making most appeal.
Winner of a maiden hurdle in Tramore on her debut for the Mullins team. She was lightly-raced over timber but looked a natural on her chasing debut at Roscommon last month when making most of the running, and jumping fluently, to beat Good To Flow in convincing style.
On that evidence, she jumps and stays and, with improvement likely from that first run since New Year’s Day, she gets the vote over Gordon
Elliott’s versatile mare
SYNOPSIS, having her first run since finishing a distant third to Magic Of
Light in a hot novice handicap at the Punchestown Festival.
There’s no doubting Wicklow Brave will be the star of today’s action, if not the whole week.
Winner of the 2015 County Hurdle at Cheltenham and the 2017 Punchestown Champion Hurdle, and runner-up to Supasundae in the 2018 renewal of the latter race, Wicklow Brave last raced over hurdles when runnerup to Joey Sasa in the Grade 3 Grimes Hurdle at Tipperary in early July.
Since then, he has recorded a hat-trick of flat wins, at Killarney (when 4/5 favourite), Galway (1/6) and Killarney (1/25).
And Mullins has found him a straight-forward opportunity to make a winning return to hurdling.