Saturday, 17 December, 2022
A revamped and refurbished Tattersalls Ireland is the venue for the start of summer, otherwise known as the May Store Sale, which returns to its original position in the calendar after the disruption caused by Covid-19 over the last two years.
The one-day event commences the store sale season on the back of yet another highly successful year for graduates of this sphere, both in the point-to-point sales and on the track.
This is just the fifth renewal of the sale but already it has produced classy performers such as last month’s Grade 2 Aintree bumper winner Lookaway and Party Business, who won a Grade 3 handicap hurdle at the same meeting.
Trainer Neil King connects Lookaway and a unique offering at this year’s sale; the only store in the catalogue by Golden Lariat, who sired this year’s Irish Gand National winner Lord Lariat.
Consigned by Michael Ronayne’s Ballyhast House Stud for breeder Fintan Farrell, lot 41 is a half-brother to King’s highly regarded Huntingdon bumper winner Give Me A Cuddle, who could make his hurdles debut later this week.
The six-year-old Court Cave gelding was also bred by Farrell and consigned by Ronayne at this venue, at the August National Hunt Sale of 2019, where he was picked up for just €10,000 by Stroud Coleman.
However it is his full-brother, Dingo Dollar, also a graduate of the Tattersalls Ireland August Sale, who may hold some clues as to the potential of this gelding, who is a late May foal.
Until Lord Lariat’s surprise Fairyhouse success last month, Dingo Dollar was the most high-profile runner for Golden Lariat, who stands just two miles from Ronayne’s stud and three from Farrell’s farm at Tim and Finola Carey’s Tullaghansleek Stud in Castletown Geoghegan, County Westmeath.
Dingo Dollar was beaten just three-quarters of a length into second in the 2021 Scottish Grand National at Ayr, though it is a previous runner-up performance at the course that Ronayne feels was the one that got away, for both Dingo Dollar and his sire.
Ronayne said on Monday: “He was a bit unlucky in the big novice chase at Ayr, he got chinned on the line after losing a shoe. If he’d won that it would have set Golden Lariat alight I think.”
Dingo Dollar went on to finish third in the following season’s Ladbrokes Trophy Chase at Newbury and last year he was also third in the Listed Rehearsal Chase, showing classy staying form over a number of seasons.
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