Kempton emerges as possible option for exciting Ballyburn

Ballyburn could have his next start over fences in England, with Willie Mullins bemoaning the decision to remove the Grade One novice chase over an extended two miles at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting.

Won last year by the Gordon Elliott-trained Found A Fifty, the race has been dominated by Mullins in recent years, with the likes of Douvan, Min, Footpad and Ferny Hollow all among his record nine winners.

In the 1990s names such as Klairon Davis, Danoli and His Song were all successful, while Moscow Flyer used it as a springboard to his success in 2001. However, due to a restructure of the novice chase programme in Ireland it has been taken from the calendar and a new Grade Two event added at Naas on January 5.

The exciting Ballyburn made a seamless transition to fences at Punchestown last weekend, but with Mullins sounding lukewarm about the new race and also a trip to Limerick for the Faugheen Novice Chase over almost two and a half miles, Kempton’s Ladbrokes Wayward Lad Novices’ Chase on December 27 is an option.

“I’m not sure where Ballyburn will go at Christmas. He might have to go to England? I’m not sure I want to go to Naas or Limerick with him. He’s your top draw for the whole year and there’s no race for him in Leopardstown,” said Mullins.

“He would have run at Leopardstown and then on to the Dublin Racing Festival, but now there’s a Grade Two race at Naas. But if he goes there he’s probably not going to run at the DRF so it has lopsided the whole thing.

“Leopardstown is a Grade One track, left-handed the same as Cheltenham. If he’d got beat the other day I might have been thinking of Limerick but that’s more for two-and-a-half-milers, that’s for different horses going a different trip on more testing ground.”

When told the Wayward Lad had a boosted prize fund this year, Mullins, speaking at a press morning at his Closutton yard, said: “I didn’t know that! Of course Kempton would suit and the race at Kempton is the right time of year anyhow.

“We only had a chat about going over fences about two weeks ago, there was Constitution Hill in the picture at the time, he probably still is, State Man, Lossiemouth and others so he might not even be in the top two hurdlers in our yard.

“I think he looks like a chaser, he’s bred to be one and I think fences will help settle him as well.

“I’d have hated to have gone down the Champion Hurdle route giving him hard races as that wouldn’t do his mind any good. He can do a season novice chasing and if he had to he could go back hurdling if it didn’t work out.”