News

Ex-British pointer makes a mark in Ireland

  • Posted: Thursday, 19th November 2020

There is always plenty of traffic heading out of Irish point-to-point stables to licensed trainers in Britain, but a reverse route has paid off for the Noel Meade-trained Eurobot.

The six-year-old won a maiden hurdle on his first start for Meade in January last year, and today, on his season’s debut and second start over fences, he cantered home in a ten-runner beginners’ chase at Thurles. His path to victory was eased by a couple of fallers, including the 4/5 favourite Lord Royal who knuckled over at the second-last fence when narrowly ahead, but Eurobot would have stayed every yard of the trip and was on his heels. After a perfect jump at the last he won by 18 lengths.

His win was another fine advertisement for British point-to-pointers, for he made his racing debut as a four-year-old (pictured above) at Andoversford in April 2018 when trained by Tom Ellis and ridden by his wife, Gina Andrews, in the colours of owner/breeder Chris Harriman.

Within a week the son of Malinas was on his way to Aintree for a selected sale of pointers run by Goffs UK, where he was knocked down for £105,000 to Meade and bloodstock agent Mags O’Toole on behalf of Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown House Stud.

Quoted on racingpost.com following today’s win, Eurobot’s rider, Sean Flanagan, said: “I suppose the bottom line is that jumping is the name of the game. I've got into a lovely rhythm and was content enough that I was going okay. Paul [Townend on Lord Royal] was probably going a bit better than me, but my horse stays really well and probably loved the ground, which is actually a bit dead. The slower the ground the better for him and the further he goes the better too.”