Carroll's Christmas comes early with winning 'spare'

Gary Carroll came in for the winning 'spare' on the Ger Lyons trained Estepona Sun at Dundalk today as the jockey filled in for jet-setting Colin Keane on Estepona Sun in the Christmas Party Packages Nursery.

Keane has rides in each of the four legs in Hong Kong's Longines International Jockeys' Championship tomorrow (the series begins at 12.10pm), where he joins Frankie Dettori, Ryan Moore and Oisin Murphy in the all-star cast.

Today Lyons' second-jockey Carroll made use of his own opportunity as he steered Estepona Sun to a last-gasp short-head win over At War

Winning trainer Lyons was represented by his brother and assistant Shane Lyons who later said “we're delighted with that. Ideally he wants an extra furlong and we were just worried about the trip today but there are no races coming up so we had to run him in that 0-80.

“He'll be a nice horse on the turf for next year over a mile and eventually he'll get a mile-and-two no problem.

“Gary was very happy with him and said he's very genuine, that's half the battle. He said he thought he was going to get there nicely but he just evened out and it took him all day in the last half a furlong. That's just basically down to trip.

“We're happy to get the win before Christmas and next year he'll be a nice turf horse.”

Quotes from Gary Carson