Connell ‘in the dark’ following Marine Nationale disappointment

Ashley Iveson
February 4, 2024 11:57 am

Cheltenham still the plan despite surprise Leopardstown reverse.

Barry Connell remains at a loss to explain Marine Nationale’s disappointing performance in the Irish Arkle at Leopardstown on Saturday.

A brilliant winner of last season’s Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, the seven-year-old made a foot-perfect start to his career over fences at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting and was odds-on to add a third Grade One to his CV back at the Foxrock circuit.

However, while Marine Nationale briefly threatened to challenge rounding the home turn, he found little when push came to shove and was ultimately well beaten in fifth place.

Connell feels underfoot conditions may not have been ideal for his stable star, but will conduct further tests this week to try to discover if something else was amiss.

He said: “He seems fine this morning, but we’ll have to run a lot of further tests on him this week, so we won’t know until later in the week what the full clinical picture of him is.

“He’s sound anyway and seems to come out of the race OK, so we’re still a little bit in the dark.

“I’d say the ground definitely was harder going than it was at Christmas. They had no fresh ground, so it was probably tacky, holding ground, which wouldn’t be ideal.

“We just don’t know (what happened), but the horse had an off day and it won’t be until later in the week when we’ve finalised our checks on him.”

While Marine Nationale’s odds for the Arkle at Cheltenham next month obviously drifted in the aftermath of his defeat, he remains at the head of ante-post lists and Connell is hopeful he can show his true colours on his return to the Cotswolds.

He added: “Our intention is to just put a line through and head on to Cheltenham.

“He obviously showed a lot of speed in the Supreme last year, beating the winner from yesterday (Il Etait Temps) and Facile Vega (finished third on Saturday).

“Hopefully we’ll get spring ground at Cheltenham and he’s proven his liking for the track there.

“All these horses can get beat at some stage and unfortunately that was the case yesterday. We’ll just see if anything else emerges.”