PAT HEALY: Brand Ambassador Pat Healy shares his thoughts on Sunday’s racing from Naas, praises the in-form Joseph O’Brien, and begins to look ahead to his first Listowel Harvest Festival as chairman of the race committee.
Naas thoughts
There was some great action on Sunday at Naas headlined by Seamie Heffernan’s 5,255/1 treble! It’s been a bit of a tricky period for Seamie given he had to quarantine after riding in France as well as the fact he picked up a suspension there too. Both those things meant he effectively gave up any chance he had of winning the jockeys’ title this season, which must have been disappointing for him, but it was great to see him back amongst the winners on Sunday. He’s a cracking jockey and a great bloke and I’m sure he’ll be right in the thick of it next season.
One interesting thing I did note at Naas was that Seamie, like the other jockeys, noticed the best part of the track was the Chase track. It obviously hasn’t been used all summer and they seemed to realise that it was in fact the best ground out there. You don’t often see a Flat race being won on the Chase track and I just thought it was a nice insight into how jockeys think during a race.
Joseph O’Brien
The days of classifying Joseph O’Brien as an up-and-coming trainer are long gone to my mind. He’s now very much one of Ireland’s leading trainers and that was shown by his across the card four-timer at the Curragh and Killarney on Saturday. His winner of the Group 2 Debutante Stakes, Pretty Gorgeous, looks a handy type and it will be interesting to see where they go next with her.
For such a young man, to be doing what he’s doing is very impressive and he’s obviously got a very good team behind him. Brendan Powell is his representative at the races and that seems to be the way a lot of trainers are going these days. They seem to prefer to watch racing from home and that seems to have become the norm, whereas it wasn’t that long ago that they had to be at the races to meet their owners.
Listowel preparations
It’s just over a month to the Listowel Harvest Festival and it will be my first as chairman of the race committee. Preparations are well underway and this week we had Niall Cronin from the IHRB to designate the relevant areas for the jockeys, trainers and press, which really showed we’re not that far off getting going which is very exciting. I always knew from going racing how much work goes on behind the scenes in order to get a raceday on, but being involved in this has really given me a first-eye view.
We’re really looking forward to everything getting started next month and our feature face, the Kerry National, is shaping up to be a cracker too. Our flagship race of the week is always fiercely competitive and the way Willie [Mullins] and Gordon’s [Elliott] teams are shaping up, it promises to be another fantastic renewal.
