HOLLOW UNSOUND
Mullins’ young star out of Cheltenham Festival
INJURY has ruled last season’s Champion Bumper hero Ferny Hollow out of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival.
The five- year- old son of Westerner, who beat Willie Mullins- trained stablemate Appreciate It at Cheltenham in March, earned a quote of 8- 1 for the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle after scoring at Gowran Park on his debut over obstacles last month.
But Ferny Hollow was last week pulled out of an engagement at Leopardstown over Christmas, fuelling speculation all was not well with the Cheveley Park Stud- owned gelding.
And yesterday Chris Richardson, the stud’s managing director, revealed:
“He will miss the Cheltenham Festival.
“Unfortunately, he’s got a suspected stress fracture behind, which is being investigated.
“Initial X- rays didn’t reveal anything but that’s not totally unusual when you have these hairline or potential stress fractures – it can take two weeks for them to show up. “But he was lame and Willie advised us last week that this has happened.
“We’re still trying to get to the bottom of the problem.” But Richardson hopes Ferny Hollow, who also featured in the ante- post lists for Cheltenham’s Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle, could still be back in action later in the spring.
“We would hope to bring him back for Punchestown, but we will see,” he added.
“He’s too good and valuable a horse not to take the warning we’ve had seriously and we are being conservative with him. “Hopefully we will know a bit more in the next few days.”