AN ex-Flat racer oozed, even gushed, class to make a winning debut over hurdles at Huntingdon yesterday, heralding what promises to be a most successful career in National Hunt racing.
But it wasn't Moonax. It was Sharpical.
Moonax, The 1994 St Leger winner, owned by the Flat's leading man Sheikh Mohammed, whose Kribensis made the transition from Flat to jumps to claim the 1990 Champion Hurdle, lined up for the two-mile Friends of ISRT Novices' Hurdle with racegoers expecting him to state an unequivocal claim for his chosen race at the National Hunt Festival.
Instead, it was the Nicky Henderson-trained Sharpical, winner of a lowly 10-furlong handicap at Leicester for Mark Prescott in August, who stole the show.
Despite his having shown a temper during his Flat days to make John McEnroe seem a mild-mannered librarian in comparison, Moonax was sent off the 13 to 8 on favourite.
Racing in third place for much of the way, the chestnut, also winner of France's equivalent of the Leger, was sent to the front by Richard Dunwoody jumping the third from home and still held the lead on the run to the last.
However, it was at this point that Mick Fitzgerald and Sharpical loomed effortlessly upsides.
A shake of the reins 100 yards from the line took the four-year-old to the front as Dunwoody and Moonax toiled a length and a quarter down at the line.
As Moonax, in character, set about his destruction of the runner-up berth, lashing out at a white fence in the unsaddling enclosure, Henderson played down 5 to 1 chance Sharpical's win.
"He has quickened up well and has come to win his race but I think you should forget about the fact he has beaten Moonax," the trainer, 46 yesterday, told pressmen.
"You are getting revved up because of the second horse but we have got a lot to learn. He will probably go for the novices at Kempton on Boxing Day and you would think Liverpool would suit him. Mick said it was like driving a little sports car."
Despite his defeat, Moonax remains on course for Cheltenham, where connections will choose from the Sun Alliance, Champion and Stayers' Hurdles.
Barry Hills, who trained the entire to classic success, said: "He stays two and a half miles on the Flat so he should stay three over hurdles and the Stayers' Hurdle might be the obvious one, but there is a long way to go. There are three races at Cheltenham and it would be nice to win any one of them."
East Houston owes his victory in the Horserace Writers Conditional Jockeys' Handicap Chase to a dip in Jonjo O'Neill's swimming pool.
The seven-year-old injured himself when falling at Catterick last month but a few lengths seem to have done him the world of good.
After his 21-length defeat of Judicial Field under Richard McGrath, O'Neill's fiancee Jackie Bellamy said: "It is all down to the pool - he has hardly had a gallop since the fall."
Martin Pipe and Josh Gifford both trained winners but neither made it to Huntingdon, for differing reasons.
As the Pipe-trained Most Equal was proving too good for top-weight Albemine in the National Hunt Jockeys Handicap Hurdle, the Nicholashayne trainer was preparing to be a guest of the Queen Mother at her St James's Palace reception last night.
