Champagne Fever (left) leads runner-up Melodic Rendezvous (centre) off the final bend© Photo Healy Racing
Champagne Fever provided Willie Mullins with the third leg of a treble at Punchestown today when the gelding added the Grade 1 betchronicle.com Champion Bumper to the Cheltenham Festival's equivalent race.
Ground certainly counted against a few of today's rivals but Champagne Fever (11/4 favourite) proved his thoroughly versatile nature when making all. The son of Stowaway staying on strongly in the straight to eventually defeat prove seven and a half lengths too strong for Melodic Rendezvous Mozoltov finished third, also for Willie Mullins, with 50 lengths back to the fourth placed Summer Star
Afterwards Mullins said “that was an extraordinary performance - he is a super horse. I don't know what we'll do next year; we were thinking of going straight over fences like we did with Florida Pearl but I'm not sure now.
“I thought he was out on his feet in the straight but Patrick said he was just idling. We know that the third (Mozoltov) is a good horse but Champagne Fever obviously stays well and is a good jumper. He is one that we are really looking forward to and has huge ability.”
