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The Willie Mullins-trained State Man romped to another Dublin Racing Festival success in the Grade 1 Chanelle Pharma Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown on Sunday.
Last year's victor was a hot favourite for the race after beating Impaire Et Passe decisively in the Matheson Hurdle and he duly delivered under a confident ride from Paul Townend. Jockey Daryl Jacob attempted to make the running on Impaire Et Passe, who struggled with niggly jumping errors throughout the two mile contest, but appeared well-beaten as the quartet turned for home. Henry De Bromhead's Bob Olinger confirmed his return to best form with a late rally on the outside, but State Man always had matters in hand and ran out a comfortable victor. Bob Olinger stayed on well for second with Impaire Et Passe taking third ahead of stablemate Echoes In Rain.
"State Man is a lovely racehorse, himself and Galopin Des Champs, Fact To File and El Fabiolo have a lovely temperament, which is half the battle. When they've a good temperament, it means the trainer can train them the way they want to and the jockey can ride them the way he wants to. It makes life a lot easier for the people involved," said Mullins.
"I thought Christmas was his best performance up to today. Today's race was different as we tried something different with Impaire Et Passe and he obviously didn't enjoy being out in front. I think he'd take a lead and probably needs another half-mile and fences down the road.
"It was an experiment to go down the Champion Hurdle route with him this year, but it doesn't look like it's working. That (Aintree Hurdle) could be on the cards, but the Champion Hurdle is there and there's only two horses in front of him for me and any one of those could get injured or run bad on the day and if you're not in you can't win it."
On his Champion Hurdle bid, Mullins added: "Everything is open. They (connections of Constitution Hill) are not going to be too worried and they'll be confident enough they have enough in the locker to beat us no matter what we do."I doubt you'd be able to lock up Constitution Hill, as soon as he got one bit of daylight he'd be gone, and that wouldn't be fair anyhow.
"All's fair in love and war and you go and run. I don't think there'll be too many runners in it and a change of tactics might make all the difference."
Paddy Power kept State Man unchanged at 3/1 for the Champion Hurdle in March.