RACING: CURRAGH REPORT:DROMBEG DAWN bridged a 24-year gap between Curragh winners for trainer Andrew McNamara when edging the verdict in a thrilling Tote Irish Lincolnshire yesterday.
McNamara’s only previous success at Irish racing’s headquarters came in the 1987 Lincolnshire with Colonel James but three decades later the big handicap on the opening day of the flat season fell to him again.
“Colonel James won a lot easier than this mare,” grinned the veteran Co Limerick trainer after Drombeg Dawn’s 25 to 1 victory. “She loves the Curragh but she was beaten less than a length here four times last year and I was convinced she was beaten again.”
Last year’s co-champion apprentice Ben Curtis had to be at his strongest to get Drombeg Dawn up by a short head ahead of Toraidhe with the English raider Kyllachy Star just a further head away in third.
McNamara, a Cheltenham festival winner with the Arkle victor Boreen Prince in 1985, is the father of top National Hunt jockeys Andrew and Robbie McNamara, and will be keeping an eye on this year’s Curragh fixture list for Drombeg Dawn.
“I think it will be 10 furlongs for her from now on, the way she finished there. We’d be tempted to go hurdling but there might have to be a rethink now. Ground doesn’t matter to her and she’s a great filly, always gives 100 per cent in her work,” he said.
He couldn’t match last year’s tally of four winners but day one of the new flat campaign was again successful for Tommy Stack as Lolly For Dolly enjoyed a smooth success in the Lodge Park Stud Park Express Stakes.
Blue Dahlia was another winner for Stack in the six-furlong handicap, giving her 16-year-old jockey Shane Gray a first racecourse success, but the blinkered Lolly For Dolly looked back to her best in the featured Group Three.
“She travelled better in the blinkers. She was inclined to hit a flat spot in her races,” said Stack’s son and assistant, Fozzy. “She could run in the Gladness, or the Athasi, or both.”
Aidan O’Brien’s three-year-old Gemstone finished runner-up to Lolly For Dolly and the champion trainer quickly got off the mark for the new campaign in the six-furlong maiden with the Séamus Heffernan ridden Sing Softly.
The daughter of Hennessy was two lengths too good for the favourite Rose Bonheur to get off the mark in style.
Sing Softly hit the headlines last December when she was stopped from running at Dundalk by the stewards after the trainer’s son Joseph weighed out 4lb overweight.
“She’s a grand filly and we’ll step her up now over a little further in trip,” O’Brien said.
Another of last year’s champion apprentices, Gary Carroll, had a mixed afternoon, getting off the mark for the new term in the seven-furlong handicap on board the topweight Defining Year, but losing the opening juvenile maiden in the stewards room.
Carroll’s mount Tough As Nails made all the running but drifted across the course in the closing stages, taking Whip Rule with him.
“The best horse has won but whether he holds it or not is the thing,” said Tough As Nails’ trainer Michael Mulvaney whose pessimism was justified in the stewards inquiry.
Lost City, part-owned by the Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, started an odds on favourite but finished last of the five runners.
Defining Year spoiled what would have been a perfect first day on the job for Johnny Murtagh as the Aga Khan’s new number one rider in Ireland.
Murtagh looked to have got Adilapour into a winning position a furlong out but Carroll pounced to get Defining Year up for trainer Michael Halford who said: “He has got stronger over the winter and he likes that ground (soft.) We’ll try and find him another handicap.”
Dermot Weld’s Sapphire upset the market leaders Claiomh Solais and Quest For Peace in the concluding maiden.
“We’ll see if we can get her some black type, maybe in one of the Guineas trials,” Weld said of the winner.
