Hells Canyon among Goffs Land Rover Bumper 65

Hell’s Canyon will look to follow in the footsteps of Petit Mouchoir as he features among the 65 entries for the Goffs Land Rover Bumper, which will take place on the opening day of the 2019 Punchestown Festival at the end of April.

The Martaline gelding, who was bought by Noel Meade for €85,000 from Oaks Farm Stables at the sponsors Land Rover sale last June, drew some similarities to Petit Mouchoir, the Irish Champion Hurdle winner, who won the Land Rover Bumper in 2015.

Both are grey French-bred’s that carried the colours of Gigginstown House Stud to win the same four-year-old maiden at Kirkistown four years apart. Petit Mouchoir winning at the Co. Down course in 2015 for Gordon Elliott, before winning the big race for the Meath trainer two months later, whilst Hell’s Canyon ran out a ten-length winner for Barry O’Neill and Colin Bowe in the 2019 renewal.

He is one of a number of horses with four-year-old point-to-point form to feature among the initial entries for the €100,000 contest, as he will hoping to become the third Gigginstown House Stud owned point-to-point graduate to win the race from the last five renewals, with Commander Of Fleet having won last year’s race, a month after winning a Moig South maiden for Pat Doyle.

Among the other 65 entries, Gigginstown are also represented by Living’s Boy An Co, another French-bred that pulled-up at Punchestown on his debut for Colin Bowe, Stuart Crawford has his Kirkistown faller Woodbury Tampa, whilst Noel Glynn has two of the four-year-old’s that he has run between the flags this spring entered.

Oneknightmoreihope finished third at both Bellharbour and more recently at Belclare, whilst The New McDonald pulled-up in the Lingstown maiden won by the subsequent £370,000 Cheltenham Festival-seller Bravemansgame.

The 2019 renewal takes place on Tuesday April 30th.