Champion trainer Willie Mullins is contemplating conquering new frontiers with an American challenge next week with Nichols Canyon and Shaneshill, both owned by Andrea and Graham Wylie.
Last November officials from the Iroquois Steeplechase in Nashville, Tennessee, and Cheltenham Racecourse announced a $500,000 bonus for any horse who could win both the US$200,000 Grade 1 Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle and the Ryanair World Hurdle within a year.
Both contests take place over three miles, with the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle part of the 75th Iroquois Steeplechase fixture on Saturday, May 14th, 2016.
The 10 entries for this year's Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle revealed today include the two potential Irish runners.
Nichols Canyon is a six-time Grade 1 winner and finished third in the Champion Hurdle over two miles at The Festival behind his stable companion Annie Power. Shaneshill finished the half-length runner-up in the Grade 1 RSA Chase over three miles and fell at the last flight in a three-mile Grade 1 hurdle at Punchestown last week when in contention.
Willie Mullins has yet to saddle a runner in the USA but is no stranger to international success, having won Japan's very valuable Nakayama Grand Jump with Blackstairmountain in 2013.
His late father Paddy landed a major prize in the USA in 1990, when Grabel won the US$750,000 Dueling Grounds International Hurdle in southern Kentucky near the Tennessee border.
Mullins said: "I have Nichols Canyon and Shaneshill both nominated for the Houghland Iroquois Hurdle Stakes. I am not familiar yet with what else is in the race and there a few other things I have to check out, but both horses are well and could potentially go out to the USA.
"At the moment, probably Nichols Canyon is the horse we would hope to get out there, if not the two of them. I think we need to internationalise jump racing and so I am happy to support the Brown Advisory Iroquois Cheltenham Challenge."
Also among the 10 nominations for the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle Stakes are Demonstrative (Richard Valentine), a multiple Grade 1 winner including the 2014 and 2015 renewals of the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle, Italian Wedding (Jonathan Sheppard), successful in the 2013 Grade 1 New York Turf Writers Cup as well as the 12-year-old Pierrot Lunaire (Blythe Miller), who landed the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle back in 2009.
Other possible starters include Rawnaq (Cyril Murphy), a Grade 2 winner in Ireland who made a good impression when winning the Grade 3 Temple Gwathmey Handicap at Middleburg and Scorpiancer (Jack Fisher) who began his career with Rebecca Curtis in Wales and made a winning US debut when taking the US$100,000 Foxbrook Champion Hurdle in October.
AMERICANS IN BRITAIN
Over the last 40 years, various American horses and riders have competed with credit in the United Kingdom, including the late George Sloan, who became the only rider from the United States to win the British Amateur Championship in the 1977/78 season.
The legendary gelding Flatterer, a four-time consecutive Eclipse Award winner, was second in the 1987 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, while Blythe Miller partnered Lonesome Glory to win at both Cheltenham and Iroquois in the 1990s.
More recently, the Calvin Houghland-owned Pierrot Lunaire came over from England to win the Iroquois Steeplechase in 2009, on his way to winning the Eclipse Award in 2012.
The Iroquois race is named for a horse that was the first American-bred horse to win the Derby in 1881 before retiring to stud at General William Harding's Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville.
The Challenge is an opportunity to attract more American horses to compete at Cheltenham and to offer English, Irish and European horses an opportunity on the world stage.
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