Unfancied Fortuna favours the brave

Seventh heaven how are ye!

Paradise needed several extra tiers to accommodate the soaring delight of Mrs. Brigid Frank after yesterday’s win by her unheralded bitch Fortuna in the Hotel Minella Oaks, one of coursing’s two greatest annual prizes.

“A fairytale!” she gasped, caught in that happy semi-hysteric place between tears and laughter, “I’m over the moon! I thought this would never, ever happen. I’ve been coming here for years, and I was happy just to have a qualifier, but I never thought, never in my wildest dreams, that I’d actually win the Oaks. But her name has a lot to do with that as well — Fortuna, the Goddess of Fortune!” Ah yes, little Miss Fortuna, and now too of course, Mrs. Fortune, because as Fortuna flew atop the muck and the mud on the hill of Clonmel, she was earning for Brigid, and for the two other co-owners, the princessly sum of €35,000, plus of course the bonus of all those future pups.