National Hunt disappointment for O'Brien

Thursday 21 February 2013, 11:46am

Aidan O'Brien's first National Hunt runners in well over eight years have failed to land a blow at Punchestown.

The master of Ballydoyle is no stranger to the jumping game, having trained the incredible Istabraq to win three Champion Hurdles at Cheltenham.

However, the stable's last runner under National Hunt rules was The Alamo, ridden by Coolmore supremo John Magnier's son MV, in a bumper at Tipperary in October 2004.

O'Brien saddled two runners in the Punchestown bumper, with Egyptian Warrior a particularly fascinating contender due to him being a brother to last year's Racing Post Trophy scorer and Epsom Derby favourite Kingsbarns.

Trading as favourite early in the morning, Egyptian Warrior drifted prior to the start of the race and although he made some headway from the back of the field in the hands of the trainer's daughter, Sarah O'Brien, he was ultimately well beaten in fifth.

Stable companion Shield ran a more encouraging race but he could only find the one pace in the straight and passed the post one place ahead of Egyptian Warrior in fourth.

The race was won by Garrett Power-trained newcomer Yes Sir Brian.

– PAA

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »