It was like old times in Galway on Tuesday evening when the perennial “King of Ballybrit” Dermot Weld returned in style to land the Day Two festival feature with Coeur D’or.
Jockey Chris Hayes drove the 14-1 shot to a thrilling head defeat of No More Porter in the Colm Quinn BMW Mile.
It was an eighth win in the race for Weld and a reminder of when he ruled the roost at Galway like no one else.
The festival’s leading trainer on 30 occasions, Weld was honoured by the Galway authorities last September for saddling a 500th winner at the track.
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Having had a special relationship with Galway ever since winning the big amateur prize as a 15-year-old jockey in 1964, perhaps Weld’s most momentous festival came in 2011 when he saddled 17 winners in a single remarkable week.
One of them was his last winner of the big mile handicap, Stunning View, and Coeur D’or bridged the gap with a thrilling victory.
Since those halcyon days, Weld has dramatically cut back on his numbers of Galway runners, relinquishing the festival king tag to Willie Mullins in the process.
But if quantity has reduced, a concentration on quality has yielded some spectacular results including from just a trio of runners on Tuesday.
Weld and Hayes combined to also win with Livio Milo while their only other hope, Tannola, found just one too good in a quality looking juvenile maiden.
That maiden was won in 2022 by no less than Weld’s current classic star, Tahiyra.
Coeur D’or was originally bred by Moyglare Stud with the aim of competing at similar elite level and while he hasn’t lived up to that, patience finally got him his place in the spotlight.
Hayes brought the seven-year-old son Dubawi with a withering late effort to run down No More Porter with Dunum back in third.
“He is a very consistent horse, this was the plan and he delivered,” Weld said.
“I was worried about the ground as he is very effective on a slightly quicker surface. A mile is his trip, but he was a very immature horse in his early days and took a long time to come to hand but patience paid dividends,” he added.
Coeur D’or’s previous claim on Hayes’s affections were when completing the jockey’s set of wins at Irish tracks by scoring on the beach at Laytown.
“To be honest, I told the boss not to run him,” Hayes admitted. “So, thank God he doesn’t listen to me anyway.”
Tahiyra is one of three subsequent classic winners to emerge from the juvenile fillies maiden over the last decade so expectation is on Paddy Twomey’s Purple Lily to graduate to top company after an impressive winning debut.
Billy Lee pounced late on the 5-2 favourite to get the better of Tannola and continue Twomey’s recent 50 per cent winning strike-rate. Purple Lily was the third first-time-out juvenile winner for Twomey in the last week.
“She has no entries but will have to get some now and the Ingabelle (Champions Weekend) would be a very suitable race.
“I had her on the list for the Moyglare but thought I was dreaming and took her out. We’ll leave her progress away, she is a big fine filly and I think will be a nice three-year-old,” Twomey said.
Mullins duly landed both National Hunt races on Tuesday, although not with the expected pair of odds-on favourites.
At age 10 the superb Sharjah made a belated debut over fences and looked a natural at his new job in a Beginners Chase rout.
The six-time Grade One winner over flights, as well as the 2018 Galway Hurdle hero, appeared to relish the bigger obstacles, sluicing up at 1-4 odds.
Faugheen, another top hurdler in the same Rich Ricci colours, memorably made an even later transition to fences and wound up scoring at Grade One level, a prospect that looks far from a longshot for Sharjah.
“He was brilliant, a pleasure to be on his back,” champion jockey Paul Townend said.
“Every time he seen a fence he attacked it and took them on well. When I was in front, he was having a little look and he left me behind at the first in the dip the first time, but popped it the next time around. It’s a pleasure to ride the likes of him,” he added.
Mullins saddled four in the opening Listed Novice Hurdle but pretty much everything went wrong for Townend on board the 4-6 favourite, Absurde.
Keen off a slow pace, and not jumping particularly fluently, Absurde was stuck behind a wall of horses coming out of the dip as his stable companion Arctic Fly kicked for home under Sean O’Keeffe.
The 12-1 shot ultimately ran out a comfortable winner from Sherodan while Absurde was out of the reckoning in sixth.
Bells On her Toes got home by just a head at Naas a week ago but was a much easier scorer in a seven-furlong handicap under rider Cian Horgan.
The claiming jockey again teamed up with trainer Andy Slattery for Khafaaq in the finale but they had to settle for third behind the other 4-1 joint-favourite Complete Fiction.
Colin Keane launched the winner with a sustained run on the outside to get the better of Arch Enemy by a neck in the mile handicap.
Tuesday’s Galway festival attendance of 13,506 was more than 3,000 down on Monday’s figure but a slight increase on the corresponding 2022 figure of 13,132.
