Gold Dancer proves too strong for favoured stablemate

Willie Mullins saddled a 1-2 in the opening Grade 3 Guinness Open Gate Brewery Novice Chase at Galway, although it was a slight surprise as Gold Dancer came out on top over favourite Westport Cove

Westport Cove set a good pace in front and the 85/40 favourite had most of his rivals in trouble approaching the final two fences in the dip. Pied Piper looked a threat at this point but folded quickly approaching the straight as 7/1 chance Gold Dancer proved the main danger.

Sean O’Keeffe’s mount stayed on strongly to strike the front close home for a two and a half length success with Intellotto a further nine and a half lengths back in third.

Mullins said, "Of my runners, I thought Westport Cove would win but Gold Dancer is by Doctor Dino, who is a horse we like, and Sean gave him a lovely cute ride. He left Paul (Townend) do all the donkey work, had one crack at him and it all worked out

"Westport Cove basically races flat-out so you just try to get a breather into him and while Paul thought he had enough breathers got, Gold Dancer is just improving. There is probably more improvement in him than the other horses we ran in the race.

"Today was the first time he showed me on the racecourse what we thought and think of him at home. We'll go down the novice chase route with him now at the big festivals and hopefully he is good enough to go on to the Drinmore Chase in December."

O’Keeffe said, “He winged the two in the dip and stayed going well. I wanted to hold onto my lad for as long as I could to give him a chance to come up the hill.

“I thought jumping the last that Paul was going to be hard to pick off, but my fella dug deep.

“Fences have definitely improved him and hopefully he can keep improving.”

Additional reporting by Tom Weekes