French Dynamite charged up for Thurles start

Mouse Morris views the Make Your Best Bet At BetVictor Chase at Thurles as the perfect starting point for French Dynamite.

The consistent eight-year-old ran several big races in defeat last season, including when narrowly denied in the Paddy Power Gold Cup and when jumping the final fence in front in the Ryanair before fading into fourth.

Morris had earmarked the Clonmel Oil Chase as the place to get his season under way but testing ground has delayed him by a few weeks.

However, despite this only being Listed class, he faces five from the powerful Willie Mullins yard with two having won at Grade One level in the past.

“It’s some race isn’t it? It couldn’t be much tougher!” said Morris.

“He’s very well anyway, and we’ve got to get him started somewhere. We’ve had him ready a while, he was supposed to go to Clonmel but the ground was way too soft that day.

“We’ll see what happens and see how he gets on. We have to start somewhere.

“He’s a grand horse, I’d love a stable full of horses like him but he is just stuck between a rock and a hard place in not quite being a Grade One horse so far. The ground is a big thing for him, he always needs goodish ground.

“I have a couple of things in the back of my mind for him later in the season, but we’ll have to see how things go. He might be a horse for the Grand National, something like that.”

Mullins runs Janidil (Jody McGarvey), Classic Getaway (Danny Mullins), Capodanno (Mark Walsh) and Haut En Couleurs (Paul Townend).

Conor O’Dwyer’s El Barra, Ellmarie Holden’s Ex Patriot and Gordon Elliott’s Farouk D’alene complete the list.