Punchestown Thursday Tips: Kevin Blake backs Klassical Dream to sustain Mullins' momentum

• Kevin's two for day three at Punchestown

• Mullins horse is a solid chance in the Stayers

• Don't turn your nose up at Snootie

At the time of writing, the Willie Mullins freight train is rumbling forward at ever-building speed. While he may well continue to dominate, that he tends to run more than a couple of well-credentialed contenders in each race at least offers choice and betting intrigue.

Klassical has Dream chance

17:25 - Punchestown

The Ladbrokes Champions Stayers Hurdle (17:25) is typical of what the Grade 1 contests in this division have been all season long - wide open and difficult to decipher. As we'll most likely see throughout this week, the winners at the Punchestown Festival aren't always necessarily the best horses in the race, but they are the ones that are fresh enough to produce their best when others don't.

With that in mind, I'm siding with one that has thrived at this meeting in the past and is fresher than most coming into it, the Willie Mullins-trained Klassical Dream.

The nine-year-old has won the last two renewals of this race and seems to be ideally suited to the demands it presents. The same cannot be said for the Stayers' Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, but there was more to the course and distance contributing to his disappointing run in it on his latest start, as he got wound up in the preliminaries and was headstrong in the race.

That was just his second start of the campaign and it wouldn't at all surprise if Mullins has been training him to peak for this meeting and an Auteuil raid in May. He enjoys the sound surface that is likely to prevail in this contest and with plenty of his main rivals having some concerns attached to them, he looks to have a very solid chance.

Snootie to show he's better than the rest

Punchestown - 18:00

The other race of interest is the Conway Piling Handicap Hurdle (18:00) is another fiercely-competitive handicap that the Punchestown Festival always produces. There are any number of potentially well-handicapped horses in the field, but slightly unusually, two of them are trained in the UK.

The Nicky Henderson-trained Walking On Air and the Christian Williams-trained Lord Snootie both look to have fair chances, but the shortcomings in the jumping department of the former swings the argument in favour of the latter.

Christian Williams has become well established and a noted target trainer. The fact that he is bringing over just one runner to this meeting in such a competitive contest suggests that he feels he has a well-handicapped horse on his hands in Lord Snootie and the promise of his two runs in handicap hurdles would back that up.

He made a winning handicap hurdle debut at Warwick prior to just finding the well-handicapped Trelawne too good for him in a valuable contest at Uttoxeter. A more forward ride, with more emphasis placed on stamina, will suit him and a first-time tongue tie can do no harm either.

He has sneaked into this race off a very light weight and he might well be up to striking a rare (but not unheard of) blow for a British-trained horse in an Irish handicap hurdle.