Ruby Walsh extended his lead at the top of the jockeys' table at Navan on Saturday when he landed three of the five races on the under-strength card.
It brought the remarkable teenager's seasonal total to 56, four ahead of Paul Carberry, who kept tabs on Walsh with a winner of his own. Thus the leading pair made a clean sweep of the races open to professionals.
However, Saturday's quantity also promised future quality for Walsh. Commanche Court, trained by his father Ted, already has a Cheltenham festival success to his credit in the Triumph Hurdle and will now an attempt will be made to mould him into a Stayers' Hurdle candidate.
"The Cleeve Hurdle over two miles and five at Cheltenham at the end of January will be a good test. If he can't stay that he has no chance of staying three miles in March. I don't think he got the three miles there last March but he is a year older now," said Walsh Snr.
Certainly there was no evidence of Commanche Court stopping at the end of Saturday's Barry & Sandra Kelly Memorial Hurdle. Walsh Jnr had him forcing the pace throughout and slipped the field on the turn in. His main market rival, Cockney Lad, stayed on well but never looked likely to really challenge, even when Commanche Court flattened the last.
Cockney Lad will now revert to novice chasing, and although the Cleeve is a main short-term target, Commanche Court could appear before that at Leopardstown over Christmas. "He is some horse," said Ted Walsh. "He's only five but he's already won over £100,000. I've other five-yearolds at home that aren't even broken!"
Colonel Yeager is a year younger but won the INH Novice Hurdle so impressively that Sean Graham's cut his odds for Cheltenham's Supreme Novices' Hurdle from 16 to 1 to 12 to 1.
Owned by the Ryanair director Cathal Ryan, Colonel Yeager also flattened the last flight but recovered very easily to beat Slaney Native by six lengths. His trainer, Martin Lynch, tasted festival success as a jockey on Elfast in the Mildmay Of Flete and is now anxious to test his young star's credentials.
"He has shown us he has the gears on soft ground but we have to see if he has the same on good going. He's a real athlete, though. and he loves to run. A lesser four-year-old would have stopped after that mistake in that ground," said Lynch.
Colonel Yeager was an astute £16,000 buy at the Derby Sale last year and Lynch is not ruling out a tilt at the longer SunAlliance Hurdle either. "He will tell us which to go for, but it's great for Cathal Ryan, who is such an enthusiastic owner. He lives and breathes this game."
Walsh started the day with a 16 to 1 win in the handicap hurdle on Hackler Poitin, who beat off the Carberry-ridden Oriel Dancer by a length, but Carberry hit the scoresheet himself when Sallie's Girl won her fourth race in a row with a game win in the three-mile handicap. "She's not very quick but by God she keeps going," said her admiring trainer Noel Meade.
