The Kerry National at Listowel's Harvest Festival meeting in a few weeks time is the next target for Skip Two, a quality winner of the Guinness Novice Chase at the Galway Festival.

There was half-a-dozen in with a shout approaching the penultimate obstacle, but Barry Cash gave Dave Fitzgerald's runner a smashing run-out to the line to hold 2/1 favourite Dreamy Gent by a hard-fought length. "I'm not surprised, but was worried about the trip being on the short side," reported the Askeaton trainer of his 9/1 winner. "He's an improving horse and will have a crack at the Kerry National next month. He's shown he can come up the hill and the plan is to come back here next year for the Plate."

Skip Two is owned by Thomas O'Doherty, one of a relatively small number trained by Fitzgerald on the outskirts of Askeaton.

Chris Hayes, a real in-form pilot these days, has described as "brilliant" the display of Celtic Dane in claiming the €160,000 Tote Galway Mile European Breeders Fund Handicap at Ballybrit, making amends for the horse's unlucky defeat in the race a year earlier.

The well-supported 7/1 chance stole a march on the opposition before the straight and was never really threatened thereafter as the pack attempted to close in. "This is my first time to win the Tote Mile and it was a brilliant performance by my horse," Hayes reported in the winners enclosure. "When he saw the hill, he just took off." This was win number 31 of the season for Hayes, and another festival triumphant for Kevin Prendergast.

The Galway Festival provided Hayes with a big early winner and in what was only his tenth ever race 'under rules' he won a cap at Ballybrit when he piloted Amourallis to victory in the McNamara Builders Premier Handicap for Ger Lyons.

"Amourallis was a spare ride for me because she'd finished second in the McDonagh Handicap on the Tuesday and was a couple of pounds out of the handicap for the Sunday race. Padraig Beggy, who'd ridden her on the Tuesday, was riding another one for Ger Lyons on the Sunday," recalled the 21-year-old Shanagolden jockey.

Galway 2008 provided likeable Croom jockey Robbie McNamara with a most creditable double. McNamara enjoyed a fantastic start to his stint in the west with success on board Dermot Weld's Majestic Concorde (7/1) in the valuable GPT Galway Qualified Riders Handicap, often referred to as the Amateurs' Derby. The marvelous success easily merited the biggest achievement of young McNamara's fledgling career.

Nineteen-year-old McNamara revisited the winners enclosure on penultimate leg of the meeting when steering Rite of Passage (4/1), yet again for the Master of Ballybrit Weld, in the Kerrymaid Festival Bumper.

Young Limerick jockey Brian O'Connell (21) of Boher enjoyed a first Galway Festival winner courtesy of Caim Hill – Philip Fenton's only runner of the week – in the Montrose Hotel Pro-Am Flat Race. The 10/1 shot did remarkably well to land the spoils, having been carried wide by Commons Glory (50/1) on the bend past the stands, at the half-way mark. "I thought his chance was gone when he was carried off the bend. But Brian didn't panic and he won well."

Unfortunately for O'Connell, he incurred the wrath of the stewards, picking-up a two-day suspension for excessive use of his whip.

A largely unknown fact about rising Limerick actor Peter Halpin – star of a recent television advertisement for Aillied Irish Bank (AIB) – is that he is the holder an amateur racing licence, and is a regular at schooling races around Greenmount Park in Patrickswell.

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