SEASON’S LEADERS O’Connor at a new milestone as Legacy supplies 1,300th success

DEREK O’CONNOR continues to go where no rider has been before by becoming the first rider in point-to-point history to reach 1,300 winners

For future quiz contestants, the win came on Longhouse Legacy in the Gain Equine Nutrition, Gort Co-Op Mart & Kerry Co-Op mares’ maiden.

Twenty-three years after O’Connor’s first points winner at Killaloe, it was another Clare course which hosted his latest mil es to ne as Lo ng ho us e Legacy was cheered back into the winner’s enclosure by a large local crowd.

Backed into 4-5 favouritism when disappointing on her debut, she duly delivered on that market confidence at the

Star performance

Downmexicoway overcame signs of greenness to burst to the front on the run to the last for a popular local victory second time of asking when accounting for her market rival Easy To Follow at the final fence to give Sam Curling his ninth victory of the campaign by two and a half lengths O’Connor has long been associated with John Staunton’s Tubber stable and it was that handler who was responsi bl e fo r se ndin g ou t

Downmexicoway to win the Costello Family four-year-old maiden under Eoin Mahon.

The field was tightly grouped until the second-last, which put the emphasis on speed, and it was the Champs Elysees gelding who picked up best to kick six lengths clear of Harley Dunne’s Strong Foundations

“We’re thrilled with that,” Staunton said. “Eoin rides a lot for me and, as usual, was very good there.

“Everything has come easily to this horse, so it’s been easy to train him He’ll be sold now.”

Rob James had won the last two runnings of that four-yearold maiden and, despite his mount this year, Mellinium Park, pulling up, the 29-year-old

West Waterford At Tallow Sunday

still claimed the day’s riding honours with a treble, putting him on 23, four behind Barry O’Neill in the table.

It began on Mt Fugi Park in the Tattersalls NH & Halpin’s Service Station five-year-old geldings’ maiden. His handler Donnchadh Doyle went to £65,000 to acquire the son of Walk In The Park in what looks a good investment on the evidence of his five-length defeat of fellow newcomer Lord Of Thunder

Henry de Bromhead may have drawn a blank at the Dublin Racing Festival but his stable maintained a 100 per cent record for the season in the open divis ion wh en Somptueux won the Monks Bar & Restaurant open.

Chris’s Dream has been De Bromhead’s leading light in opens this term with back-toback victories at Moig South and Ca rri ga ro st ig, an d So mp tu eux adde d to the stable’s successes on his first