Lead-horse Bambari credited his trainer Fozzy Stack with a day-late birthday present at Dundalk today as the 41 rated gelding and his 40 year old trainer combined to win the opening Irishinjuredjockeys.com Handicap.

Bambari's only previous win came over today's five furlongs course and distance in October 2017, when also rated just 41, and today possessed that same rating but again raced from the basement mark of 45.

The six year old son of Arcano today broke smartly, raced prominently and eventually held on for a head win over Lapilli

Winning jockey Chris Hayes has a fondness for Bambari along with an appreciation of the work done by seasoned colleagues, and subsequently quipped “he’s a good lead horse and does all the main work in Stacks - you could call him our Seamie Heffernan!”

He added “when he’s in the (piece of) work you know where you are going.

“He freshens up when the yearlings come in and thankfully we are able to find a few races up here for him. He likes fast ground and a turning track like this.

“He hadn’t ran in a while so he was a bit fresh the last day but he was well fancied because he’s a very good work horse. He never misses a day and is probably Fozzy’s best worker.”

Quotes from Alan Magee