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Haiti Couleurs will not run at the Dublin Racing Festival on Saturday after a cancelled ferry disrupted travel plans. The Welsh and Irish Grand National winner was being primed to run in the Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown before going to the Cheltenham Festival to contest the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

However his name was missing from the 13 declared for the race in which Willie Mullins trains eight, including dual Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs and Fact To File. Last season’s Gold Cup hero Inothewayurthinkin, who will be ridden by Keith Donoghue. Haiti Couleurs, who is trained in Pembrokeshire, west Wales by Rebecca Curtis, will head to the Denman Chase at Newbury a week on Saturday instead.

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Curtis said: “It was a tough decision, but it just turned out there were too many negatives to taking him over.

“Firstly he’d come off a few days of antibiotics at the beginning of the week, a very small sinus issue which was nothing really, that wasn’t our main issue.

“They cancelled our local ferry from the nearest port at Fishguard which would have meant a big hike up to Holyhead and then across to Dublin.

“Thirdly there was the uncertainty about the ground, they are due more rain again having already been waterlogged once this week so the likelihood is heavy ground, whether it will be that we don’t know.

“When the Gold Cup is his main aim we just thought everything wasn’t adding up for a good prep run for that, so we’ll definitely go to the Denman at Newbury next Saturday with him now.”

She added: “He’s all well, there are no problems but you need everything aligned to be at your best at Cheltenham and we didn’t think that was happening, as we were using it as a prep we didn’t think it was ideal only six weeks out from Cheltenham.”