Ponfeigh impresses in Navan feature

The John Oxx trained Ponfeigh followed up on his recent maiden success at Leopardstown as he ran out an impressive winner of the feature race at Navan this afternoon, the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Race.

The grey son of Teofilo ran a cracker on his debut at the Curragh last October, finishing third behind stablemate Ebanoran with Table Rock in second.

He made his three-year-old debut at Leopardstown just over a week ago, obliging at the odds of 8/11, and he was well fancied to follow up today going off the 15/8 favourite having opened at 9/4 on-course.

Settled in last of the four runners by Declan McDonogh the Thomas Barr owned victor was angled to the outer to challenge two furlongs from home.

He soon quickened smartly and hit the front a furlong out, keeping on well from there to score by two and three parts of a length. Nonchalant who was sent off the 7/1 outsider, ran a fine race to take second under Pat Smullen for Dermot Weld, while Agena (2/1) was third and Maskoon (9/4) last.

John Oxx said afterwards: "He came on from his run the other day and he likes good ground. He has a good turn of foot and it was nice to see him do it smoothly.

"He is bred to go another couple of furlongs. He is a nice horse. That was only a four or five furlong race (slow early pace) but it wasn’t a worry because of his turn of foot.

"He is in the Meld Stakes at the end of July and he is not entered over Derby weekend. I’ll see if I can find something else for him.

"I’ll step him up into something further and better, but we will see what kind of rating he gets after that."

Additional reporting by Michael Graham