RACING:TOPWEIGHT IS normally not the place to be in a handicap but it was the perfect position for top amateur jockey Robbie McNamara who secured a memorable 33 to 1 Paddy Power Chase success on Majestic Concorde at Leopardstown yesterday.
Dermot Weld’s career has plenty of “previous” when it comes to successful raids on the big winter prizes and the legendary champion flat trainer was filling in a rare blank on an already bulging jump race CV with his ultra-versatile seven-year-old.
But if Majestic Concorde put himself alongside the likes of Perris Valley (Irish Grand National) and Galway Plate winners like General Idea, Kiichi and Ansar in Weld’s National Hunt affections, then the diminutive gelding has now secured a special place in his jockey’s heart.
At a lofty 6ft plus, the 22-year-old rider faces a daily struggle to make any sort of racing weight and it is easy to see why Weld’s initial idea of using a claimer in yesterday’s race didn’t overly-enthuse McNamara.
Three previous victories on Majestic Concorde included the big amateur prize at the Galway festival in 2008. The daily business of working in Weld’s Curragh yard has also strengthened McNamara’s regard for a horse who was all but ignored by punters yesterday.
But as the gambled-on favourite, Beautiful Sound, who got into the race as a second reserve, faded to ninth, and the hugely fancied Becauseicouldntsee couldn’t generate enough power to get after the winner, it was Majestic Concorde that swept to a two-and-a-half-length victory.
“He’s only a small little horse, long and narrow, but he is so tough,” McNamara grinned.
“He had done plenty for this but he wasn’t drilled and I kept waiting for him to get tired. If they’d gone by me, I’d still have got such a kick. He jumped brilliant. And he just kept going.”
One of the first to congratulate the winning rider was his brother, Andrew, the top professional jockey, who finished fifth on Catch Me.
Weld’s own amateur riding career involved a struggle with weight too and McNamara’s dedication, plus an outstanding strike rate for the yard, meant he had little hesitation ditching the possibility of using another rider for yesterday’s big race.
“Robbie didn’t think it was a good idea!” he joked.
“I don’t remember ever having even a runner in this race before. But it is great prize-money and that’s why we’re here. He’s a wonderful horse to train. Ideally he likes top of the ground but that was fairly loose and he got through it. He’d plenty of weight but he also had a bit of class: simple as that.”
It is almost a dozen years since Weld picked up Leopardstown’s big handicap prize over hurdles when Archive Footage sprang a 25 to 1 shock in what was then titled the Ladbroke Hurdle.
Yesterday’s success meant taking another €106,000 of bookmakers money back to Rosewell House and typically the trainer wasted little time in outlining how a 34-race career that has already yielded nine victories might get even better.
“He got beaten in a four-way photo for the Chester Cup this year and I wouldn’t rule him out of another attempt on a race like that,” he said.
Majestic Concorde’s versatility was also illustrated by a third in last summer’s Galway Plate and Weld isn’t ruling out another attempt on the big Ballybrit prize in 2011.
“He probably didn’t have enough room in this year’s Plate and that helped us today as Robbie was able to get a good position on the horse and let him pop away,” he said.
Becauseicouldntsee had to settle for the runner-up spot again having finished second at the Cheltenham Festival to Poker Di Sivola and the former high-class mare Pomme Tiepy put in her best effort for some time in filling third, just ahead of Agus A Vic.
But on a day when one of the joint-topweights, Follow The Plan, lost his rider at the very first fence, it was the other top-rated horse that proved weight doesn’t always stop them.
