Brave Fortune

Brave Fortune did well to finish third in the two-and-a-half-mile rated novices' hurdle at Fairyhouse on Saturday. Prominent early on, he lost a good pitch on the run up the side of the track to Ballyhack, not helped by a mistake at the middle flight on that part of the track. Just 10th of the 11 runners in the main group as they started down the back straight, he closed up into eighth place on the run to the home turn. He made ground around the home turn, but he was always playing catch-up, trying to make ground into a quickening pace. He ran into traffic in the home straight too, he had to switch between the final two flights, and again on the run-in, and, in a race in which not much went right for him, he did well to keep on as well as he did to finish third. Big Chou ran out an impressive winner, a previous course and distance winner, but Pat Doyle's horse would almost certainly have been second at worst with a better run through the race, even through the final stages of the race.

Pat Doyle's horse remains a horse in whom to be interested. Winner of his only point-to-point, he was impressive in winning his maiden hurdle at Clonmel in early November, a race from which the fifth and sixth have both since come out and won. He goes well over this intermediate trip but, a three-parts brother to Friends, who won a bumper over two and a half miles, he could get further. A 115,000-guinea purchase at the Goffs Land Rover Sale, he is probably at his best on good to soft ground, but he does have form on soft and heavy ground too. A rating of 116 could under-estimate his ability by a fair way.

Fairyhouse, 30^th November 2024