Brighterdaysahead’s emphatic win sends out warning for Cheltenham
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A significant potential rival for Constitution Hill in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham emerged on the final day of Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting on Sunday, as Brighterdaysahead, a five-year-old mare trained by Gordon Elliott, came home 30 lengths clear of her rivals in the Grade One Neville Hotels Hurdle, with State Man, the reigning champion over timber, only third in a race that he had won for the past two seasons.
![[Owners Anita and Michael O’Leary (second and third left), with jockey Sam Ewing and trainer Gordon Elliott after Brighterdaysahead won the Neville Hotels Hurdle.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/90e016439320a91b161ba8c100b989400550b5f9/0_201_4671_2803/master/4671.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
State Man set off as the 4-9 favourite for the race on Sunday, despite having had his first defeat in a completed start in Ireland when finishing a close second behind Brighterdaysahead at Punchestown in November. While Brighterdaysahead had made her own running there, however, she had a pacemaker for the rematch in her stable companion, King Of Kingsfield, and the pair steadily built a lead of about a dozen lengths by halfway.
State Man never threatened to make significant inroads into the leaders’ advantage, and after Sam Ewing sent Brighterdaysahead into the lead two out she pulled further clear all the way to the line. Willie Mullins’s runner clearly failed to run anywhere close to his best form – “I was in trouble from an early stage and never really travelling,” Paul Townend, his rider, said – but Brighterdaysahead’s time of 3min 45.2sec confirmed the visual impression of her wide-margin win.
A long list of outstanding two-mile hurdlers, including Hurricane Fly, Honeysuckle, Istabraq, Sizing Europe and Faugheen, all failed to get within four seconds of that mark at Leopardstown, while the highly competitive two-mile handicap hurdle on Friday, won by Enniskerry under 11st 5lb, was 8.6sec slower.
