Last year’s AIG Europe Champion Hurdle winner Like-A-Butterfly has rejoined Christy Roche after missing all last season and will race over fences this winter. The mare won her first eight races, including the 2002 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, but she had to be given a long rest after banging her off-fore tendon just under 12 months ago.
Frank Berry, racing manager for owner JP McManus, says she has only just gone back into training so no date has been set for her reappearance but she will run in novice chases. Roche, left, schooled her over fences before putting her away at the end of the 2002-03 season and he was impressed with the way she jumped.
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End nigh for Powerscourt
Powerscourt pulled muscles when a close third to Azamour in last Saturday’s Irish Champion Stakes and Ballydoyle’s hopes of reversing the form in the Champion Stakes at Newmarket on October 16 have been dashed. The four-year-old looked likely to spring a surprise at Leopardstown but faltered inside the final furlong, almost certainly because the muscle damage was beginning to hurt. According to Aidan O’Brien, the muscles affected were “in his nearside behind and he is going to be off for a little while”.
Time is running out and, as he is unlikely to be kept in training as a five-year-old, he may have run his last race. He developed into a high-class performer at 10 furlongs this season, winning the Tattersalls Gold Cup by six lengths and running out a decisive winner of the Arlington Million only to lose the race in the stewards’ room.
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Monty’s given more time
Missing from Wednesday’s Kerry National will be the 2002 winner Monty’s Pass. Mike Futter, head of the Dee Racing Syndicate, which owns last year’s Grand National hero, says the race has come too soon for the 11-year-old and he now expects his first race of the season to be in the Munster National at Limerick on October 10. However, the gelding was beaten in this race two years ago and afterwards trainer Jimmy Mangan said that he was a much better horse going left-handed.
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Opera role for Goldrun
Alexander Goldrun, taken out of today’s Blandford Stakes at the declaration stage, will run next in the Prix de l’Opera at Longchamp in a fortnight’s time. The Irish 1,000 Guineas runner-up, right, had last weekend’s Matron Stakes as her target for several weeks but she missed that too. Trainer Jim Bolger says that she was taken out because she failed to scope clean.
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Lad case rumbles on
Many were surprised to hear at last Tuesday’s Turf Club press conference that the owners of 2001 Irish National winner Davids Lad are going to take their case to the Supreme Court.
The horse was forced to miss last year’s Grand National after being given a 42-day ban at Naas when the local stewards ruled that the racecourse had been used as a training ground and that his rider had made insufficient effort.
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The four owners — Eddie and Jimmy Moran, Matty Lynch and Nicky Butterly — failed to get the ban overturned in the High Court. The costs were mounting at an alarming rate by this stage and going to the Supreme Court will be particularly expensive.
But Lynch, a publican in Trim and brother-in-law of trainer Tony Martin, said during the week: “We reckon there is a case to be won so we are going on with it.” The Turf Club expect the Supreme Court hearing to take place in January but Lynch believes that February or March is more likely.
Building costs raise fears
The Curragh is likely to get a 55 per cent Horse Racing Ireland grant towards the €70 million cost of its ambitious rebuilding programme rather than the 40 per cent widely expected. HRI is also going to have to pay a considerable amount to Leopardstown for its improvement programme and many fear that prize money could suffer as a result. But HRI chief executive Brian Kavanagh says that neither grant will make unduly large inroads into the annual €60 million-plus government subvention because it is empowered to make long-term borrowings to fund racecourse improvements.