Bambino Fever aiming to regain winning thread

Champion Bumper heroine Bambino Fever bids to bounce back from the first defeat of her career at Punchestown on Monday.

The Willie Mullins-trained six-year-old carried all before her in National Hunt Flat races last season, enjoying big-race wins at the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown, the Cheltenham Festival and the Punchestown Festival.

She was unsurprisingly long odds-on to pick up where she left off on her hurdling debut at Naas last month, but was beaten half a length by Gordon Elliott’s Oldschool Outlaw, with the pair drawing 11 lengths clear of a subsequent winner in Radiator Springs.

Bambino Fever, also a winning point-to-pointer, steps up to two and a half miles for the Matchbook 50:50 Graduation Series Mares Maiden Hurdle and connections will be expecting her to get back on the winning trail ahead of a likely return to Prestbury Park in March.

“She’s well and hopefully she has improved from the first day,” said Mullins’ assistant David Casey.

“I’d say the filly that beat her is good and she was impressive in her bumper in Navan. I’d say it was a strong enough race in Naas.”

Bambino Fever is the general 11-4 favourite for the Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. Her Monday rivals include stablemate Poetsia, who made a winning start to her career in a Cheltenham bumper last April for trainer Toby Bulgin before changing hands for £300,000 and she now carries the colours of Gigginstown House Stud.