Champella gifted win following late drama in maiden

Champella benefited from some late drama to run out a rather fortunate winner of the Walkers Maiden Hurdle at Down Royal.

Approaching the final flight, the race looked to chiefly concern Finnthemagician and Evenwood Sonofagun However, that picture quickly changed, as the former made a bad mistake which resulted in the Gordon Elliott trained horse bumping into Evenwoodsonofagun before coming to grief.

The latter, who was sent off evens favourite, was hampered as a direct result, losing all chance of race victory. Champella, who to her credit, was staying on strongly in third, found herself in front with the race at her mercy.

The Ross O'Sullivan trained filly went on to take the spoils, in doing so, adding to her course bumper win back in June.

Winning rider Tom Harney said: "I could see the lads running around at the back of the second-last. I saw it happening and they were drifting out wide, and I said I would switch back to the inside. It just worked out grand.

"It looked like I would have been second but I think it would have been a lot closer than it looked. I was only getting going at the finish and she would have stayed three miles I'd say.

"I was (coming here pretty confident), I had done all her schooling at home. To be fair James Reilly rides her at home and does a great job with her.

"She's a great fun mare and everyone is getting plenty of fun out of her."

Additional reporting by Michael Graham