Going - Yielding to Soft. Fine
Placepot Pool - 10,365.06 Dividend - 213.20 Winning Units - 34.07. Quadpot Pool - 1,793.66 Dividend - 168.00 Winning Units - 7.9. Days Aggregate - 80,674.00 Last Year 154,341.00
Sir Lucan reigns under Keane
Cheekpieces work a treat on Leabaland
Plate hero provides jockey with first winner
Ben is with me full-time and is a Dingle man but is no relation to Jack or Paddy (Kennedy, jockeys). He came to me wanting to ride over jumps but he has ended up riding on the flat and it's a bonus for him as he is a big lad and he works very hard. He rides well. He (Swiss Army Officer) is a big horse and we thought we'd be going down the bumper route but he just doesn't stay. He has been placed and I didn't think he'd ever get there as he has been unlucky. He was due to go Leopardstown at the end of the week but doesn't take his racing too well and I might leave him off for the year now.
Autumn Mist swamps her rivals in Cork
She was good and Shane gave her a great ride. The ground was probably a bit too deep the last two times she ran but she had a lovely run in Killarney the time before and did it well there. We'll look for the same sort of race next time and we might try her in Dundalk during the winter.
Starlight Dream seals a brace for Keane
Sales-bound Noble Music defies top weight
she will go to the horses in training sale in Newmarket in ten days and would be an ideal national hunt horse. We could do that job but the boss (William Kennedy of Stanley Lodge in Cashel) is into the flat scene. We recently moved a few horses down to the south of France to race for trainer Jerome Reynier and have yearlings coming along from Stanley Lodge. There is one horse for Dundalk and we keep moving them in the right places. I have my license since the start of lockdown and previously worked in America for ten years; I worked for breeze-up man Jerry Bailey in Florida, then Jeff Morrison and at John Gunter's (Glennwood) farm in Kentucky. I did all the circuits and am now a private trainer based in Tipperary.
Prime Chief in charge for Fahey
A few of our horses have been running well without getting a winner on the board and we thought we had a strong chance today and the non-runners were a big help. He had a nice run over 1m4f here the last day and has come forward from it. He is not an over-big horse, was bought from England and size-wise he won't be going jumping but he will go back to Dundalk over the winter and we'll try and find something on the grass before then if the ground is ok. That's Dylan's first winner for me and he is a very good lad.
Dreal Deal gets the hat-trick in Cork
He is gorgeous and is a National Hunt horse not a flat horse. He was doing a half-speed there and you'd wonder how he got beaten in a four-year-old point-to-point! It shows the quality of the four-year-old maidens and he obviously can stay and has speed and was still only second. We are delighted and while we feel a little hard done-by for getting 26lbs and the second in that race didn't get a pound so we can't really work that out but we'll take it on the chin and move forward. He is a jumper and will be a chaser down the line so anything we do now is a bonus. He is a big baby, the yard had aspergillus last year and his first couple of runs I thought were brilliant in maiden hurdles and then went by the wayside and grew two inches since. He took a bit of time and I was running him on the flat to sharpen him up and learn to enjoy his racing because they were all bleeding when they got aspergillus. It looked like we'd struggle when he went up 19lbs on the flat but he has since gone up another 3lbs so we said we may as well go back to the flat as it looked like he would struggle over hurdles. He didn't get in at the Curragh on Thursday and it is probably just as well as three runs in six days wouldn't be ideal. We'll mind him now and I'll put him away and let him develop. I am willing to take horses myself but don't want to take horses just for a training fee; I would love to get a couple of nice types to go to the bigger meetings. I have six riding out, I still have my kitchen