Festival Fun For Fahey
It was a successful Go Racing In Yorkshire Summer Festival week for the Richard Fahey yard with both the trainer and his stable jockey landing the major prizes.
Richard took the leading trainer award, sponsored by Goldsborough Hall, with a clear eight winners over the week, finishing four ahead of his nearest rivals.
It was a tighter competition for the Sky Bet sponsored leading jockey award, with Oisin Orr and Cam Hardie both scoring four winners across the Yorkshire fixtures, however Oisin won on count back, having scored three third places.
The Moment of the Week also went to the Malton yard on account of the team winning the opening race on the first three days of the festival, with unraced two-year-olds. Ziggy’s Condor landed the spoils at Pontefract with Tropical Island quickly following up at Ripon and Airman justifying favouritism at Beverley.
Michael Shinners, Head of Sports PR at Sky Bet said,
“Richard Fahey’s record with two-year-olds speaks for itself but to win consecutively with unraced horses is an impressive feat. I think we saw a particularly nice horse in Tropical Island and I look forward to watching her progress. The Summer Festival is a great platform to showcase these future stars to the public.”
The Sky Bet Best Turned Out Yard Award was won by the Michael & David Easterby yard who won three best turned out awards in Sky Bet sponsored races across the week. There will be £1,000 to share between the staff and a pizza party at a later date.
Ben Warn, Chairman of Go Racing In Yorkshire said,
“We’ve had a fantastic week of racing with some great sport and themes to tie the week together. The HoofBeat Bitter seemed to go down well among the crowd and the variety of race meetings from family days to music nights provided something for everyone. Crowd numbers looked good, despite the rain during the early part of the week and we were very sad to lose the meeting at Redcar due to waterlogging.”
Jockeys were not only competing on the racetrack but also took part in ‘Paddock and Chips’ a football skills competition that took place before racing each day. James Sullivan amassed the most points during the week and after going to penalties, John Kington won the jump jockeys version before riding in the Jump Jockeys’ Nunthorpe at York on Saturday.