Sophie Leech prepared for her first runner at the Dublin Racing Festival with Cheltenham aspirations

The five-year-old will make his Irish debut in the €100,000 Ryanair Handicap Chase following three promising runs. He joined Leech’s Gloucestershire yard at the start of the season and secured a commanding victory last time out at Cheltenham’s December meeting. Madara, who has exclusively raced at Prestbury Park this season, will be traveling to Ireland for the first time on Friday morning ahead of Saturday’s Listed 2m1f contest. This also marks Leech’s first runner in the country in four years.

“Madara has been in great form since Cheltenham and we’re really looking forward to it,” said Leech. “It’ll be our first runner at the meeting, although we’ve had Punchestown festival runners before. The timing just worked out really well for this race. We wanted to keep him at two miles for now and the race on Saturday just fits the bill.

We’re hopefully going to step up in trip for the Plate [at Cheltenham] as we think he might find a little bit of improvement for two and a half miles,” said Leech. “He came to us with a fairly high rating in France and it’s been really nice to see him come over here and prove that figure was justified. He’s taken really well to chasing for a young horse, he’s such a great jumper so it made sense to go straight over fences with him. He seems to have thrived on his racing so far and he’s an absolute dream to train in every way.

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