Dinoblue defends her Mares’ Chase crown with minimum of fuss

Dinoblue again showed her toughness and reliability with a successful defence of her Mrs Paddy Power Mares’ Chase crown at Cheltenham.

Trained by Willie Mullins and ridden by Marsh Walsh for owner JP McManus, the chestnut was sent off the 11-8 favourite in the same race she won by eight and a half lengths last year.

In the end victory was assured from some way out, with Dinoblue brushing aside the runner-up, Gavin Cromwell’s Only By Night, with ease up the hill to cross the line a length and a quarter ahead. Panic Attack was third for Dan Skelton.

A delighted McManus was flanked by his granddaughters as he said: “They travelled in from Switzerland today and they’re my lucky mascots. (They were here) this day last year, so the Gold Cup is their day – Gold Cup and Grand National.

“It was a competitive race and I think she got an excellent ride from Mark and what more can I say, I’m just very happy.”

Mullins said: “One thing Mark said when he got off her was that her jumping today was magical.

“The last ditch she jumped so well and took her into the race and she was just competitive then. Mark didn’t want to go that far out but what could he do.

“She’s very uncomplicated, a lovely mare and she’s a good match with Mark.

“That looked her best performance without going through the form book. We’d been worried about the trip before but there didn’t seem to be any problem with anything this year – ground, trip but especially her jumping, that was extraordinary.

“If you had a horse jump like that every day of the week, it would make this game easy.

“I don’t know when she might go off to stud, the main difference between the Irish and French is that in France they’d go off to stud with her, but we treat these mares as racehorses and if they are good we tend to keep them. I’ll leave that up to the owner.

“There’s nice mares’ races for her left this season, so I’d imagine she’d stick to them.”