Danoli legend back on track

TOM FOLEY asks the questions. Danoli answers. For the bay gelding there is no fanfare for his reappearance.

No glitz. No glamour. No majorettes. No marching, brass bands. No time outs. Just a racecourse in Clonmel.

A soft Winter's day and a handful of fences. Danoli's sort of place. His presence is enough to cause a stir.

"He's on his grub," Foley told us. "He'd been on a diet last year and never really ate as much after. But now he's back on a big nosebag. He has the conditioning this year that they were begging for last year. Foley, in full flow is effusive.

"He's the best part of a hundredweight heavier than last year at this time. By Chnstmas he'll be the way we want him."

It was an inflated local affair, a swollen crowd peppered up by the presence of a celebrity building on another chapter to his life's story. Danoli the novice hurdle champion. Danoli, the crock. Danoli, the comeback. Danoli, the steeplechaser.

The survivor. The people's champion. Still the people's champion.

The two pins in his legs from his 1995 fracture could not suppress his class. He was six lengths clear of Consharon, but in all fairness who cared yesterday who came second. Who really cared whether it was Tom Treacy, his regular jockey, or the ebullient Philip Fenton who piloted Danoli to his first ever win over fences.

Treacy could only watch his arm in a sling nursing a broken collar bone. After parting ways from Oxford Lunch in the first race, the drums were beating frantically around the course for a replacement jockey.

Charlie Swan declined and, hopped on board Aidan O'Brien's Consharon.

Fenton couldn't believe his luck when Foley sought him out.

We gritted our teeth as Danoli's screwed together bones took each obstacle and we gasped when No Tag tumbled four fences from home.

In our minds we thought Danoli was actually taking it gingerly. His first ever outing over the more fences, with other horses breathing around him, he was minding himself.

But it didn't matter. The crowd erupted as Danoli made for the winners' enclosure after he cruised to take the £2,568 first prize in the Beginners Steeplechase. In the thick of it, as the punters washed around him, you might have lost the run of yourself. A first slep. Danoli, the eight year old, was already being hyped as the great Irish steeplechase hope.

"The Gold Cup, Tom?"

"Cheltenham, Tom?"

Foley looked at the gathering crowd. "The Gold Cup is a long way from a beginners chase in Clonmel," he warned. "But I'll be happy that he'll have a great future in chasing now.

"He has found that bit of faith," said Foley. "Today he has given us exactly what we wanted and I am quite happy about that."

Danoli departed, a whites sweaty froth around his splendid middle, his ears pricked.