GRAND SLAM Mullins confident Chacun Pour Soi can complete his Festival collection
WILLIE Mullins remains confident Chacun Pour Soi can give him victory in the one Cheltenham Festival feature race he has yet to win.
The most successful trainer in Cheltenham Festival history, Mullins has never won the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase, the Grade One feature on day two of the meeting. And having started this year’s Festival with an odds-on favourite – Appreciate It – winning in style, Mullins is confident he can do something similar in the Champion Chase.
Chacun Pour Soi will be making his Cheltenham debut but the nine-year-old arrives at Prestbury Park as an odds-on favourite after some fine wins in his homeland this season.
The County Carlow handler, who has also declared Cilaos Emery, said: “It would be huge for the stable and everyone here to get that (Champion Chase) win and have all the Championship races at the Cheltenham Festival.
“When we started off we just wanted a runner and then a winner, not dreaming we could be in the position we’re in today.
“But it’s something we’ve been lucky with and I’d love to do it.
“Hopefully he will give us a chance to try and put that away. He’s (been) in great form since Leopardstown and does everything right at home, so fingers crossed.
“It hurts, but at Cheltenham, every 35 minutes it’s a new page and you don’t really get to think about it or for it to sink in and, thankfully, we had a good Cheltenham last year, so it’s history.
“He had his troubles early on in his career but now everything has settled down he just goes up the gallop every morning and does his
Leopardstown? He is one of the ones if you had to pick the top five or six travelling over, you’d say he is one that you are really hoping can bring his ‘A’ game there.”
With 2019 winner Altior out of the race through injury, the home team’s challenge to
Mullins will come from Dan Skelton’s Nube Negra – who beat Nicky Henderson’s former two-mile star at Kempton over Christmas.
Defending champion Politologue is also back for more for trainer Paul Nicholls, who has won the race a joint record six times.