Yorkhill takes the Tolworth

Willie Mullins took home another Sandown prize when Yorkhill captured the Grade One 32Red Tolworth Hurdle.

Ruby Walsh returned to the winner's enclosure coated in mud having travelled in the slipstream of his four rivals for most of the two-mile contest, but his mount travelled powerfully throughout, met the final flight on a good stride and did enough to see off the persistent challenge of OO Seven by two and a quarter lengths.

Sent off at 4/9 having been available at 4/5 less than 24 hours earlier, Yorkhill justified punters' confidence in some style and did enough to please Walsh and Mullins, who has now scored with four of his last five runners at the track.

"I'm having a great time just now and Willie Mullins is doing a great job - it's nice to have some really competitive horses to go to war with," said owner Graham Wylie, speaking to Channel 4 Racing.

"[Willie] is a really nice guy, down to earth, doesn't get too excited about things, tells me how it is. He keeps you level-headed and it's just nice to have such a good trainer to train some great horses."

Wylie has a good half-dozen high-class novice hurdlers in his colours this season with the trainer and said: "We think Up For Review is probably going to go for the Albert Bartlett. Between Bellshill and Yorkhill, they're both probably two-and-a-half-mile horses and they could both go for the Neptune or maybe one go for the Supreme - Ruby tells me Bellshill has the more speed, but I just don't know."

Walsh commented: "He settled lovely. He's a big, raw horse and he's very immature. He pulled himself up a bit, but it's good to see that.

"He has very little experience so it was good to win a race like that."

Also pleased was Mullins, who described the win as "very good", but gave no direct steer as to which race the winner might end up in at the Festival.

"To do what he did on that ground was impressive. Looking at the pedigrees of the other horses, I thought they might handle the ground better today," he said.

"Bellshill would be a stronger horse, but both would have enough speed to go back to two miles, although saying that, that was more like a trial for two and a half miles today.

"In Ireland we don't have the luxury of running them at the distance you want to run them in because we don't have a big enough pool of races to do that, so we make our own minds up at home based upon what they show us.

"We'll just see what's really going well, come Festival time, and what jockey arrangements we've got. I'd like to have a good word with Ruby, see what he'd like to ride in a certain race, but we have more owners these days with their own jockeys."