Easter Sunday Racing Tips: A Couple Of Fairyhouse Fancies

Easter Sunday is traditionally a big race day over in Ireland and at Fairyhouse there is a cracking card, with the feature races the Grade 1 pair of the WillowWarm Gold Cup. and Honeysuckle Mares' Novices' Hurdle. Billy Grimshaw is backing the Closutton maestro to bag both big pots and makes the case for his fancies here...

14:22 Fairyhouse - WillowWarm Gold Cup

It's a formidable record that Willie Mullins possesses in this race, with five winners in the last six runnings, and with the Closutton head honcho sending the front three in the market to the race I am expecting that record to extend to six in seven. Champ Kiely is the chosen mount of Paul Townend and while he doesn't often get things wrong, I think he is underestimating the mare SPINDLEBERRY in here and will be backing her to give Danny Mullins a fantastic spin and in the end, a victory.

Townend's mount and the favourite is a big brute of a horse and will enjoy the fact the ground is softer than it has been for some time right now at Fairyhouse, but it's impossible not to have been impressed with Spindleberry this season and her jumping really is a sight to behold. There will be an interesting pace battle on here as everything in the field has been prominent in the past, but I wouldn't be unhappy wherever Danny puts the mare so long as he lets her get on with things on her own terms.

Ile Atlantique to me wants to dominate races over the minimum trip off the front end and when he's asked to do anything else, he sulks so I don't see him as quite as much of a threat as Champ Kiely, for all he is obviously talented, while Firefox for Gordon Elliott has disappointed somewhat this season but I can't see this step up in trip being the answer; he looks another two miler.

Down Memory Lane had his form franked in the Brown Advisory but won't appreciate the give underfoot one suspects, while Kilbarry Saint looks outclassed so in my mind this race really should come down to two horses and I don't see why the mare should be double the price of the favourite. She is worth a bet at anything north of 2/1 in my book.

16:10 Fairyhouse - Honeysuckle Mares' Novices' Hurdle

At Cheltenham this year, much was made of the starter having a shocker and two horses stand out like sore thumbs to me as being inconvenienced, Primoz and MAUGHREEN. I kept the faith with the former at Aintree and he ran a fine race for place returns and will do the same with Maughreen here considering she lost all chance when whipping round at the tapes in the Mares' Novices', won by the reopposing Air Of Entitlement. I think the market may well be underestimating the race as a piece of form in comparison to placed Albert Bartlett mare The Big Westerner, who is a short priced favourite. 

Don't get me wrong, she looks an immense talent for Henry De Bromhead and the slower ground here should see her to better affect, but is she really a 6/4 shot against these mares over the intermediate trip, when she will surely be a three mile chaser in time? Not for me. Sixandahalf was a good second to Air Of Entitlement at Cheltenham, just worn down in the closing stages, but I think that form will remain the same considering the softening ground here and if anything the Cheltenham winner could extend the gap between the two, but Maughreen is still in the could be anything category and I'm willing to chance her at a decent enough price with our friends at BoyleSports following her Cheltenham no show.

It is pertinent that she was a wicked drifter at Prestbury Park so perhaps if you are reading this on race day check the market, as another savage drift like that would put me off, but if her price is stable and around the 8/1 - 10/1 mark, she is worthy of each-way support as prior to Cheltenham she had looked very tidy and is still a thoroughly unexposed mare.