The Conditional rewards Hassett's faith

The Conditional rallied to good effect to get up and deny Caltex in the shadow of the post at Thurles.

Punters turned away from The Conditional who drifted from out to 3/1 from 2/1. Caltex was all the rage in the ring as he contracted to 8/13 favourite from 11/8 for this extended two mile seven furlong maiden hurdle.

The pair had the race to themselves approaching the last where The Conditional wasn't fluent and slightly stumbled.

Caltex looked to be home as Jack Kennedy asked him to go and win his race on the run-in, however, Andrew Lynch galvanised The Conditional in the final 100 yards to get up by a head.

Trainer Martin Hassett said: "We're delighted and Andrew said he'd improve 10 or 15 lengths from the last day and he was a horse we always liked.

"Normally we'd have those type of horses sold but we wanted to prove a point with this lad; selling is the name of the game and if we can sell them, we sell them but if we don't we stay going.

"We said we'd come here and it is our home venue and Andrew was very sweet on him. He is a nice horse and jumped a lot better today.

"If he's not now sold we could look at some of the festival meetings but obviously Cheltenham is out of the question!"

Additional reporting by Thomas Weekes