Klassical delivers Dream performance in Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown | Racing News

Klassical Dream ran the opposition into the ground under an inspired ride from Paul Townend to win the Dornan Engineering Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown.

Townend stole a march on his rivals at the start when taking at least out six lengths out of the field.

Only Danny Mullins, riding last year’s winner Flooring Porter, tried to cover the move and roust his mount into second place behind the Willie Mullins-trained seven-year-old.

Klassical Dream, having his first race since winning Punchestown’s Stayers Hurdle in April, settled into a handy lead with Flooring Porter well clear of the others.

Try as he might, Flooring Porter could not mount a serious challenge to Klassical Dream (7-4 favourite), who kept on gamely to land the Grade One spoils by two lengths. Burning Victory was 21 lengths away in third place.

Klassical Dream was cut to 2-1 favourite from 7-2 for the Stayers’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival with Coral and 11-4 from 4-1 with Paddy Power and Betfair.

“We were expecting pace in the race but Paul said the horse took the initiative, jumped out the gate and went,” said the winning trainer. “The horse took over and did everything himself.

“He is a hard horse to train but has huge ability and doesn’t always give you confidence when he works. I was only hoping things would come right when he came here today and they did. We’re getting to know him a lot more now and trust him. It’s a good possibility he could head straight to Cheltenham but we haven’t really thought about that.”