Trainer celebrates remarkable 100th winner at FestivalBlackmore makes most of hot favourite’s Champion Chase exit
There have been afternoons at the Cheltenham Festival in recent years when it seemed that Willie Mullins had found a way to banish the abiding air of uncertainty that had always been the meeting’s motif in earlier times. Within the first 90 seconds of the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Wednesday, however, the script had been read and then rejected as far too predictable, as El Fabiolo, the 2-9 favourite, was pulled up with well over a mile still to run, leaving countless bets on a Mullins treble in the day’s Grade One events in tatters.
Captain Guinness and Rachael Blackmore, who finished nearly 15 lengths behind El Fabiolo at Leopardstown last month, were the pairing to take advantage, finishing one-and-a-half lengths in front of Gentleman De Mee, a stable companion of the odds-on favourite.