The free-wheeling Ferbet Junior gave his three opponents a lesson in flamboyance in the Powers Champion Chase at Gowran Park yesterday and left the former Gold Cup hero Imperial Call, who finished lame, a colossal 46 lengths behind in last place.
Ferbet Junior's attitude to restraint is to ignore it and he and Barry Geraghty stretched the opposition from the off. Half a mile from home Conor O'Dwyer was at work on Imperial Call but it was left to the 20 to 1 outsider Amberleigh House to chase the winner home at a respectable distance.
O'Dwyer wasn't despondent about his old partner, however, and said: "That Ferbet Junior gets out there and just gallops them to death. On that ground over two and a half miles I was not able to give my horse a breather. I was flat out all the time, always coaxing, so overall I was very happy with him."
Jessica Harrington entered Ferbet Junior for the £100,000 Nicholson Champion Chase in the morning and is considering that or a trip to Ascot in late November for her livewire grey.
"He was very wired coming here but he is like that. He always gets revved up. I ride him at home and he is like a lamb. No one believes me because if anyone else sits on him he breaks out in a sweat," the trainer smiled. "Barry has clicked with him though and they get on very well."
Geraghty gets on with most horses these days as he brought his total for the term to 23 with a follow up success on Lodge Hill in the maiden hurdle.
"This one's for Cork," laughed Meath-born Geraghty to Lodge Hill's owners, the eight-member Ilen syndicate from west Cork that includes Fine Geal TD Jim O'Keeffe.
Another rider on the double was Kevin Manning who won the first two races on the Jim Bolger-trained pair Plurabelle and Dolydille.
The former, owned and bred by Ballylinch Stud, short-headed Raypour in the last strides of the maiden and Bolger said: "She could run again this season.
