Scealai Aonair wins at Clonmel

Scealai Aonair produced a wonderful performance on only her second run for the club in an evening race at Clonmel. The race was over 1m 1f 164y flat race on ground that is still heavy from a couple of days rain, even though it's May. Scealai showed she doesn't mind the mud on her debut at Cork a few weeks ago when she came 3rd. This time she was prominent right out of the stalls, racing in about 3rd place most of the way round. Declan McDonogh was on board and gave her a great ride, keeping her close to the front and then letting her go coming round the final bend into the straight. The pick up she showed in her last race was there again and she raced away from the field and kept on going to the finish winning by 3 lengths. Fantastic result from a gutsy little mare who is proving to to be the club star. She was also a 10/1 shot so anyone lucky enough to have backed her would have been quids in.

Colonel Maximus had his best run for the club on Monday at Kilbeggan. He was ridden by Jack Kennedy who had him handy for most of the race and he was sitting about 4th with 2 to go but, a bit like Bettatogether at Fairyhouse a while back, he hit the last hard and that was the end of his challenge. Not sure he would have placed anyway but definitely his best performance for us on slightly better ground than he'd been on before.

Edit: Scealai Aonair was covered by 2000 Guineas winner Galileo Gold. Apparently if a mare hits a bit of form it is common to try and get her pregnant. We'll find out in the next couple of weeks if the encounter will bear any fruit and in the meantime she will continue to run until the end of summer.