Peter Farrell
While the semi finals of the Jimmy Flaherty Memorial served as the feature at Galway on Friday night, there was a brilliant debut performance earlier in the card as Stick With Me dismantled his novice contest to win in a fast 29.02 .10s.
Just a December 23’ puppy, Stick With Me is the latest prodigy to hail from the Mullins-Curtin kennel and confidence of a special performance was clearly high as the 82-pounder was sent to traps as the 4/5 favourite in the opening semi final of the ‘Unraced Sweepstakes ON2/ON3 525’.
A choicely bred son of Grangeview Ten and Marathon Queen Dana Point, what was even more impressive about this performance was that Stick With Me walked from traps and looked to have his work cut out after the first few strides. However, showing a lovely turn of early speed from his wide berth in six, the heavyweight turned a close second behind Flyers Hobbit, before turning on the after-burners passing the sprint box. Quickly excelling into a five length lead on the approach to the penultimate bend, Stand With Me took off thereafter and his performance from the halfway mark was nothing short of phenomenal. Racing to an extending eleven length victory, the time was 29.02 .10s for this future star and given his pedigree, it would be a shock if we didn’t hear more from this tracker in the next few months. Watch this space!