Image © Healy Racing
Dora D’Or supplied Dublin rider Lee Shanahan with his fifth success under rules when the pair claimed the Bluegrass Resolve Cube Hunters’ Chase at Down Royal.
Dora D’Or supplied Dublin rider Lee Shanahan with his fifth success under rules when the pair claimed the Bluegrass Resolve Cube Hunters’ Chase at Down Royal.
The seven-year-old had only made her belated debut almost a year to the day earlier when making a successful first start at Daramona House, and she entered this 2m4f contest having posted a career-best to chase home leading pointing mare The Great Unknown at Ballcahane a fortnight earlier.
Send off as the favourite, the thoroughly consistent individual, had only finished outside the first two placings in five previous outings, and whilst that might have come on her sole previous start under rules when eighth in a point-to-point bumper in Cork, she was unphased on her return to the track.
Looming alongside the long-time leader Hathaways Cottage in the home straight, Ross O’Sullivan’s charge eased into the lead approaching the final fence, and from that point she was always in command.
By the line, she had six lengths to spare over the returning Focus Point, who finished encouragingly on his first start in close to two years, with Sampoet claiming third at the expense of his stablemate Sampoet.
“I was a little bit worried it might be a little bit quick for her, but she proved that it didn’t bother at all,” Shanahan said.
“She travelled brilliantly the whole way throughout the race and I was quietly being confident down along the back. Jumping the fifth-last I said if I’m definitely not in the first two it’s a joke.
“I was full of running coming down to the last and she won well, galloped well to the line.
“She hasn’t got many gears but she stays galloping and is a proper hunter chase mare, she has won three point-to-points, and now a hunter chaser – she’s a fair mare.”
