Image © Healy Racing
Bartlemy Boy won the final Hunter Chase of the season as he finished off best of all to land the Beasley Engineering-sponsored race at Listowel on Monday afternoon.
Bartlemy Boy won the final Hunter Chase of the season as he finished off best of all to land the Beasley Engineering-sponsored race at Listowel on Monday afternoon.
Sent off as a 10/1 shot having only got as far as the fifth fence at Killarney three weeks earlier, a race that he had won 12 months earlier, it was Johnny Barry that was called upon by Trixie Bary for his Kerry outing, as he got the leg up aboard the eight-year-old for the first time.
Chasing the leaders in a race where there were no shortage of different pace setters, with Hunt Away, What Path and Big Interest all taking turns to lead the field in the opening half of the race.
When What Path blundered away the lead at the fourth-last fence, it was the Monksgrange maiden winner Heartbreak Weather who went on under Troy Walsh until they were replaced at the head of the field by the always prominent Hunt Away.
Barry had been encouraging Bartlemy Boy along since the fourth-last, and whilst Hunt away got first run on the field with his move for home approaching the penultimate fence, he was run down inside the closing stages.
Bartlemy Boy got up in the dying strides to deny Marie Harding’s Hunt Away by a half-a-length, with Heartbreak Weather surviving a final-fence blunder to finish four and a half lengths adrift in third.
The favourite, and recent Killarney scorer Solitary Man, finished in fourth having never travelled with any fluency.
This was the third time in the last four years that this particular hunter chase has returned to Cork, with Bartlemy Boy’s victory following on from the Eugene O’Sullivan-trained Bugs Moran last year, and Nice To Meet who won the 2023 edition for the late Mikey O’Connor.
“Alan O’Sullivan previously rode him and he told me how to ride him,” the winning rider said.
“He got into a nice rhythm, but the inside track here is a bit sharp for him, he would prefer more of a galloping track. He stuck at it well and galloped all the way to the line.
“We jumped off a good gallop and then steadied it up, but going out on the final lap they went on again.
“Going down to the last I knew he would stay going, he winged the last and won going away, it was brilliant.”
