The West's Awake© Photo Healy Racing
The West’s Awake has a good record in small-field conditions chases and can master his four rivals in the Southampton Goodwill Plate Steeplechase at Listowel today.
Best treated at the weights, the Edward O’Grady-trained Yeats gelding may have most to fear from Liz Doyle’s useful handicapper Last Goodbye and Martin Todhunter’s Monbeg River who is re-routed here after just missing the cut for Wednesday’s Kerry National.
Willie Mullins’ Ballinrobe bumper winner Golazo made a pleasing start over hurdles when runner-up at Cork in July, and can go one better at the expense of Arthur’s Quay and You Raised Me Up in the John J. Galvin Maiden Hurdle, while Bellshill’s half-sister Janet’s Charm can build on her debut third at Limerick to take the Listowel Print EBF Mares’ INH Flat Race for Mags and Patrick Mullins. Silver Planeur was noted making late headway to finish third at Ballinrobe last month on her first start since last Christmas, and should have good prospects for Eric and Conor McNamara in the Paud, Sarah and Mary Fitzmaurice Handicap Hurdle, where Walking On Glass and Chess Grand Master are other contenders in a competitive affair.
This mixed card begins with four races on the Flat, and Jessica Harrington can saddle another two-year-old winner with Elite Legion in the opening Foran Equine Irish EBF Auction Fillies’ Maiden, after the daughter of War Command showed potential on debut at Sligo. Emphatic was second twice at the Galway Festival, and John Larkin’s four-year-old can gain compensation under Rory Cleary in the Guinness Handicap, while C J Cregg can notch her third win of the season in the John & Terry Moriarty Memorial Handicap for trainer John McConnell and jockey Siobhan Rutledge, who rode the first winner of her career recently at Navan.
Tom Hogan ’s winning hurdler Aim For Glory was third in last year’s edition of the Bank Of Ireland Maiden, and Billy Lee’s mount can get the better of Pepper ‘N Salt and Lady Stormborn to land the spoils on this occasion.
