McAteer delight at Best win in Ayr
Irish raider Nans Best (18-1) showed the way home under Pat Cosgrave in the W&D McCulloch Rail Division Handicap on the first day of the Ayr Gold Cup meeting.
His Navan-based trainer Liam McAteer runs 2005 Gold Cup third Majestic Times in the big race tomorrow, with Cosgrave again on board, and he could hardly have been happier with this half-length scorer.
McAteer said: “All the jockeys back home say that Nans Best will stay a mile and a half and he could be our Triumph Hurdle horse next spring.”
Unlike McAteer, ’sprint king’ Dandy Nicholls will be five-handed in his bid to win the Gold Cup and he made a flying start to the fixture when Northern Bolt won the opening You Can’t Predict FA Maiden Auction Stakes.
The two-year-old was smartly out of the stalls and made all the running under the trainer’s son Adrian to score by two lengths from Elizabeth Swann.
Nicholls senior said of the 12-1 chance: “That was no surprise. I don’t know what happened first time out at Ripon, I thought he would run a lot better there.
“We bought him at the Doncaster Breeze-Up Sales. He did a good time there and he is a proper racehorse.
“He has got a lot of bone and the plan was always to come here – I just don’t know what went wrong at Ripon.”
Champion jockey Ryan Moore injured a toe and was stood down for the rest of the day after being unseated from Redesignation after two furlongs of the totesport 0800 2211 221 EBF Novice Stakes.
At the business end, the Nicholls team went desperately close to completing a double with Ivestar but were denied by Richard Fahey’s Graceful Descent.
It looked all over for the winner when she was headed by Ivestar inside the distance, but she rallied in good style for Paul Hanagan to win by a short head at 11-4.
Fahey said: “She deserved this. I thought she was going to be only fourth when she was headed but Paul said she put her head down and battled.”
Hanagan completed a 29-1 double when he brought Tim Walford’s The Grey Berry (7-1) with a strong late burst to catch Best Prospect in the final strides of the Knight Frank Handicap (for the Kilkerran Cup).
Walford snapped up The Grey Berry for 9,500 guineas at the sales and he expects him to fetch a great deal more when he is sent back to be sold on next month.
However, he has an important date to make before that.
For having watched Indonesia complete an across-the-card double for the stable at Pontefract, Walford said: “If he gets in, The Grey Berry will run in the Cambridgeshire and then he will go to the October Sales.”
Totesport make Walford’s stable star a 33-1 chance from 50s for the nine-furlong handicap at Newmarket on October 6, with VC Bet also going 33s.
Andrew Elliott was on the mark with Sweet World (10-1) in the John Smith’s Extra Smooth Selling Stakes for Alan Jarvis, and doubled up when 100-30 favourite Sands Of Barra obliged in the Burns Mall Kilmarnock Handicap.
