Fog brings a dramatic halt to proceedings

LEOPARDSTOWN FESTIVAL:FROST MIGHT have been the big worry in the morning but it was fog that ultimately brought racing to a dramatic halt at Leopardstown yesterday, preventing the €150,000 Lexus Chase from being run. In a remarkable series of events that were described by the racecourse management as a "disaster," the dozen runners for the Lexus were called back from the start as a bank of thick fog enveloped the Co Dublin course.

A quarter of an hour after the scheduled off of the Lexus at 2.35pm, the stewards decided to give the fog 30 minutes to clear but at 3.25pm, the plug was finally pulled on the meeting, with just four races having been run.

“It’s a bit of a disaster but you can never predict the weather,” said the Leopardstown manager, Tom Burke. “The Lexus will now be transferred to tomorrow and will make up part of an eight-race card. The first race will be off at 11.50am.”

It provided a terrible anti-climax to a day that had seen the track pass a morning inspection and which had been building up towards a Lexus crescendo, with Ruby Walsh’s mount Cooldine heavily backed into favouritism.

However, 15 minutes before the off, fog suddenly enveloped the back straight and quickly extended to the finishing straight. Within a few minutes it was impossible to see even the big screen in front of the stands and the final fence in the straight.

The large 14,206 strong crowd, which included the Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who had travelled to watch his horse What A Friend run in the big race, had to endure a protracted wait as the stewards hoped for an improvement in conditions that never happened.

“When we started back, it was like driving a car into the dark,” said What A Friend’s jockey, Barry Geraghty. Ultimately the decision was taken to abandon the rest of the card, which also included a handicap hurdle, and a bumper, on health and safety grounds.

Earlier, Davy Condon completed a remarkable Grade One Christmas hat-trick as Pandorama emerged best in a titanic finish to the big novice chase. The Co Cork-born jockey has made the most of Paul Carberry’s enforced 30-day ban for a positive breath test by stepping in for the cream of Noel Meade’s rides and enjoying the finest month of his career.

Pandorama’s hugely exciting short head defeat of Weapon’s Amnesty in the Knight Frank Novice Chase was the fifth Grade One success in total enjoyed by Condon during Carberry’s spell on the sidelines.

But it was the third day in a row that the makeshift Condon-Meade alliance has hit the Grade One jackpot after Go Native’s St Stephen’s Day victory at Kempton and Hollo Ladies 25 to 1 shock at Leopardstown on Sunday.

“Davy’s just a very good rider with a great pair of hands. He rides like Paul and he actually thinks like him through a race. He doesn’t gun horses at the fences either,” said Meade.

Pandorama and Weapon’s Amnesty are both likely to go straight to Cheltenham for the RSA Chase for which Paddy Power quote both of them at 12 to 1. Condon received a one-day ban for his use of the whip in this race.

“I just felt that he wasn’t in the same form as he was going into Fairyhouse the last day so for that reason I think we will try to get him to Cheltenham for the three-mile novice and I don’t think he will run before,” added Meade of Pandorama.

Andrew McNamara was in charge of Powerstation’s success in the Grade Two Woodies Christmas Hurdle, pouncing at the last to get the better of Noble Prince with Oscar Dan Dan running on for third. “We will look at the Galmoy and then going back for the World Hurdle,” said trainer Eamonn O’Connell.

Yesterday’s crowd of 14,206 was down from a 2008 figure of 16,265.