Unaccompanied ruled out of the Champion Hurdle – Horse Racing Update
Unaccompanied will not be running in the Stan James Champion Hurdle, which was scheduled to take place at Cheltenham, England on Tuesday, March 13, 2012. This news was revealed by her trainer, D. K. Weld.
According to the Unaccompanied’s trainer, “I told her owners she won’t be going to Cheltenham next month. She is fine and Davy [Russell] really looked after her when her chance was gone the last day and the plan now is to bring her back on the Flat at stakes level with the Alleged Stakes - a race she won last year - a strong possibility.”
He went onto say, “We’ll also look at running her at the Punchestown festival but she won’t be running in the Champion Hurdle.”
Unaccompanied was given a starting price of 16 to 1 for the Champion Hurdle. Her overall performances in such events have been pretty much impressive, but she has been unable to deliver in recent times.
The five-year-old mare has entered seven hurdles in her career until now and has managed to win four times. She also finished as runner up once whereas there were only two occasions, when she failed to end up in the top three.
The Champion Hurdle has attracted some very good horses and one of them is Hurricane Fly, who has got a general starting price of 4 to 5. He is tipped to win, but things will not be easy for him, as Grandouet and Zarkandar are also expected to do well.
The latter two horses have been awarded with a general starting price of 6 to 1 and 7 to 1 respectively. They have the potential of fighting for victory and will not make things easy for the bookmakers’ favourite horse.
Hurricane Fly, trained by Willie Mullins, has been one of the most impressive horses in hurdles. He has entered 14 of such events and emerged victorious on 12 occasions. Other than that, he ended up as runner up once.
Mullins is very much confident that his horse will be able to make a solid impression at Cheltenham, as he has been running well over the past few events. However, only time will tell whether which horse ends up on top in the main event.
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