Last year’s Champion Hurdle third made the perfect start to life over fences
Petit Mouchoir was the latest Cheltenham hopeful to lay down an early season marker with a taking first start over fences at Punchestown on Wednesday. The Henry de Bromhead six-year-old was a winning point-to-pointer and put that experience to good use with a faultless round of jumping en route to a seven length success in the beginners chase.
Taken to the front from the off, Davy Russell steered his mount around the 2m trip with the minimum of fuss with sharp jumping a feature of a taking performance.
The headline act lives up to his billing - two-time Grade 1 winner Petit Mouchoir puts in a fine round on chase debut at @punchestownrace: pic.twitter.com/029e7pTTpn
— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) October 18, 2017
Already among the market principles for the Arkle at the Cheltenham Festival in March, bookmakers reacted by cutting the Grade 1 winning hurdler to as short as 7/1 from 12’s for the 2 mile contest (best price 10/1).
Oddschecker punters certianly appear to be impressed with a mammoth 80% of all Cheltenham ante-post bets on the Arkle hopeful since the race finished. The six-year-old had already accounted for 25% of all ante-post bets this week before the race, with those who took the bigger odds before the race now sitting pretty.
Oddschecker spokesperson George Elek: "Petit Mouchoir couldn't have done much more on his season reappearance and the bookies have acted accordingly. It's still very early days, but de Bromhead's horse has proven class and festival form, which can be extremely important come March"
