Brave Inca Injured

rickP · Joined: 05 Feb 2007 Posts: 291 Location: East Midlands

Brave Inca set to miss jumps season with tendon injury

Tony Paley
Wednesday August 29, 2007
The Guardian

One of Cheltenham's ever-presents will be missing at the National Hunt Festival in March following yesterday's news that Brave Inca, winner of last year's Champion Hurdle and second this year, has been ruled out of the forthcoming jumps season with a tendon injury.
The announcement from Brave Inca's trainer Colm Murphy, while tempered by the fact that his handler feels the gelding could make a full recovery, marks another significant blow for hurdling's old guard.

Hardy Eustace, who went off second favourite in March, is now just too slow while Brave Inca's other great adversaries, Macs Joy and Harchibald, are quite simply not good enough.
Sublimity, who beat Brave Inca convincingly to wrest the title away from him last March, is now a best-priced 5-1 with Irish layers Paddy Power who have youngster Katchit, the Triumph Hurdle winner, at 13-2. It is then 16-1 the rest, a far cry from recent campaigns when Brave Inca and co jostled for favouritism and treated jumps fans to a series of memorable races in the big two-mile races.

Murphy said: "The results of a scan showed there was some damage to his near-fore tendon. It's something that he should make a 100% recovery from but it rules him out for the year. He'll have a controlled programme at the moment, going on the horse walker and so forth. It will be a case of just restricting him this year. At that level he would have to be 100% to be competitive."

Brave Inca has won nine Grade One races so far and Murphy believes he made a mistake in giving him such a tough campaign last term.

"Hindsight's a wonderful thing and if I had the time again I wouldn't have run him at Punchestown in April. It had been such a long, hard season.

"I have no doubt in my mind he will get three miles and I still believe he can be very competitive at two. I think we just went to the well one too many times," added Murphy.
_________________
http://www.artforums.co.uk