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Ireland's champion Jump trainer Willie Mullins is contemplating an American challenge next week with Nichols Canyon and Shaneshill, both owned by Andrea and Graham Wylie.
In November 2015, officials from the Iroquois Steeplechase in Nashville, Tennessee, USA and Britain's Cheltenham Racecourse announced a $500,000 bonus for any horse who could win both the US$200,000 (approx £138,000) Grade One Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle and the Ryanair World Hurdle within a year.
The Brown Advisory Iroquois Cheltenham Challenge is straightforward: win the Grade One Ryanair World Hurdle at The Festival at Cheltenham in March and the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle, or vice versa, within 12 months.
Both contests take place over three miles, with the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle part of the 75th Iroquois Steeplechase fixture on Saturday, May 14, 2016, while the 2017 Ryanair World Hurdle, worth at least £300,000 (aprox US$435,000), is provisionally set to take place on Thursday, March 16.
The 10 entries for this year's Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle are revealed today and include the two potential Irish runners.
Nichols Canyon is a six-time Grade One winner and finished third in the Grade One Stan James Champion Hurdle over two miles at The Festival in March, 2016 behind his stable companion Annie Power. Shaneshill went close to victory at The Festival in March this year when the half-length runner-up in the Grade One RSA Chase over three miles.
Mullins has yet to saddle a runner in the USA but is no stranger to international success, having won Japan's very valuable Nakayama Grand Jump with Blackstairmountain in 2013.
His late father Paddy landed a major prize in the USA in 1990, when Grabel won the US$750,000 Dueling Grounds International Hurdle in southern Kentucky near the Tennessee border.
Mullins said: "I have Nichols Canyon and Shaneshill both nominated for the Houghland Iroquois Hurdle Stakes.
"I am not familiar yet with what else is in the race and there a few other things I have to check out, but both horses are well and could potentially go out to the USA.
"At the moment, probably Nichols Canyon is the horse we would hope to get out there, if not the two of them.
"I think we need to internationalize Jump racing and so I am happy to support the Brown Advisory Iroquois Cheltenham Challenge."
Also among the 10 nominations for the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle Stakes are Demonstrative (Richard Valentine), a multiple Grade One winner including the 2014 and 2015 renewals of the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle, Italian Wedding (Jonathan Sheppard), successful in the 2013 Grade One New York Turf Writers Cup as well as the 12-year-old Pierrot Lunaire (Blythe Miller), who landed the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Hurdle back in 2009.
Other possible starters include Rawnaq (Cyril Murphy), a Grade Two winner in Ireland who made a good impression when winning the Grade Three Temple Gwathmey Handicap at Middleburg, Rudyard K (Todd Wyatt), Syros (Jack Fisher), Tempt Me Alex (Elizabeth Voss) and Scorpiancer (Jack Fisher) who began his career with Rebecca Curtis in Wales and made a winning US debut when taking the US$100,000 Foxbrook Champion Hurdle in October.
Baltimore-based Brown Advisory saw the opportunity to support the Challenge, and signed on as the presenting sponsor.
Over the last 40 years, various American horses and riders have competed with credit in the United Kingdom, including the late George Sloan, who became the only rider from the United States to win the British Amateur Championship in the 1977/78 season.
The legendary gelding Flatterer, a four-time consecutive Eclipse Award winner, was second in the 1987 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, while Blythe Miller partnered Lonesome Glory to win at both Cheltenham and Iroquois in the 1990s.
More recently, the Calvin Houghland-owned Pierrot Lunaire came over from England to win the Iroquois Steeplechase in 2009, on his way to winning the Eclipse Award in 2012.
The Iroquois race is named for a horse that was the first American-bred horse to win the Derby at Epsom Downs, UK, in 1881 before retiring to stud at General William Harding's Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville. Many of the horses who have won the Iroquois since 1941 descended from the race's namesake.
The Challenge is an opportunity to attract more American horses to compete at The Festival and to offer English, Irish and European horses an opportunity on the world stage.
