Jack Kennedy and Gordon Elliott made the Fairyhouse Winter Festival their own with a remarkable string of success over the weekend. The Dingle jockey played a leading role as the trainer was responsible for seven winners across the two days, adding to Saturday’s treble with a four-timer, including two Grade 1 wins, on Sunday. Kennedy who was on board the hugely promising Mighty Potter which landed the Grade 1 Bar One Racing Drinmore Novice Chase. A seventh success in the race for Elliott, Mighty Potter wasn’t perfect at either the fourth or third last fences but he demonstrated his remarkable talent when pulling away from the final fence to beat this year’s Irish Grand National runner-up Gaillard Du Mesnil by four and a half lengths, the pair all of 14 lengths clear of the third-placed Banbridge. Honeysuckle’s winning streak finally came to an end as her bid for a record fourth successive win in the Bar One Racing Hatton’s Grace Hurdle came up just short. Victory went to the Elliott-trained Teauphoo, another ridden by the irrepressible Kennedy, which outbattled multiple Grade 1 winner Klassical Dream to score by a neck. Honeysuckle was two and a half lengths away in third place. The first of the Elliott winners came in the shape of the Jordan Gainford-ridden Punitive which won the three-mile five-furlong handicap chase. On a day the trainer dominated, he saddled the first two home in the race with the Pioneer Racing-owned 9/2 chance beating 4/1 favourite Fakira to the line by two and a half lengths. As is so often the case, Elliott rounded off a big occasion with success in the bumper, this time it was the Jamie Codd-ridden Better Days Ahead doing the honours at odds of 15/8 with a cosy three and a quarter-length win over the Willie Mullins-trained 4/6 favourite Chapeau De Soleil.
Kennedy and Elliott were the biggest winners over the two-days of the Winter Festival at Fairyhouse on Saturday and Sunday. He won the opening race at the course on the first day as the Jack Kennedy-ridden Minella Crooner took the two-mile five-furlong beginners’ chase in thrilling fashion. The Kenny Alexander-owned six-year-old, at odds of 2/1, battled well to beat Willie Mullins’s 4/6 favourite I Am Maximus by a shorthead. Kennedy was also in the saddle as 7/1 chance Landrake won the rated novice hurdle. The five-year-old made much of the running and went clear from before the second last hurdle to score by six and a half lengths from the Dermot McLoughlin-trained Dovlator.
The intervention of the stewards saw the Bryan Cooper-ridden Nucky Johnson, trained by Noel Meade, take the opening division of the two-mile maiden hurdle at Punchestown on Tuesday. The judge called Peter Fahey’s The Big Doyen the winner by a short-head margin but he was adjudged to have carried Meade’s 6/1 chance to the left close to the finish and the placings were subsequently reversed.
Phillip Enright and trainer Oliver McKiernan combined to win the two-mile maiden hurdle for four-year-olds with No Looking Back at Thurles on Thursday. A 14/1 chance, the grey had plenty in hand as he beat the John McConnell-trained 11/10 favourite Innatendue by three and a half lengths. Jack Kennedy followed the Tralee jockey into the winners’ enclosure as he landed the mares’ maiden hurdle over the same distance on 5/6 favourite Liberty Dance. The Gordon Elliott-trained five-year-old raced clear from the final flight to win by four and a half lengths from Henry de Bromhead’s Foxy Girl for owner Tim O’Driscoll.
