A burning ambition
Trainer Power aiming to strike gold
IT IS the dream of every trainer in national hunt racing to have a horse good enough to compete at the Cheltenham Festival.
For a relatively small yard specialising in point-to-pointing, based on the extreme edge of Co. Wexford down on the Hook peninsula, to have one going there as a legitimate favourite is a real fairytale.
But this dream is the reality for Pierce Power from quite close to the haunted Loftus Hall beyond Fethard-on-Sea. Just a year after his debut at the Wexford Hunt meeting at Ballinaboola, his Burning Ambition is well fancied to win the St. James’ Place Foxhunter Chase, raced immediately after the storied Gold Cup over the same track and distance and the same 22 daunting fences.
The race is for amateur riders and is often called their Gold Cup, and is for horses that have come through the point-to-point and hunter chase route. Burning Ambition will have the help of the very best in the saddle as Jamie Codd takes the ride, trying to add to his haul of seven Cheltenham Festival winners.
The horse was second in that Ballinaboola race on February 5 last year but then ran up a string of four pointing successes, showing improvement all the time.
He took to the track to win his maiden Hunter Chase at the Limerick Christmas Festival meeting on December 27. This was a red-letter day for Power and his regular jockey, Rob James from Tomona, Killanne, as it was a first career win on the track for both of them.
Burning Ambition ran a terrific final warm-up as he stepped up in class again for the Punchestown Hunter Chase almost exactly a year after his debut. He was in the front line the whole way round and looked like winning at the last but was run out of it by the high-class Gilgamboa, a former Grade 1 winner and fifth in a Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham, ridden by Nina Carberry for Enda Bolger.
The horse is a seven-year-old Scorpion bay gelding, out of Wyndham Miss Sally. Pierce explained how he came to train him: ‘I got the horse as a four-year-old at the Derby sales in 2015; I have had to be patient and take things slowly with him because he was a big rangey horse, all of 17 hands.
‘I thought he was well worth looking after and I gave him plenty of time, nearly two years before he first raced, and it has paid off very nicely. He has shown steady improvement all along and we are all hoping he can step up again in the big one next week.’
Burning Ambition has been ridden in all seven races so far by Rob James, and Pierce has nothing but praise for him. ‘He is a really fine rider and he has done a great job for us. However, we felt that the vast experience of Jamie Codd, with his great record over the unique Cheltenham course and his familiarity with all the hype of the Festival, was going to be a definite plus for us,’ the trainer explained.
The horse will leave for Cheltenham from Rosslare next Tuesday. ‘We want to give him every chance to settle in over there and get over any travel issues,’ said the trainer.
In his pointing days the horse ran in the colours of Pierce’s sisterin-law, Alexandria Gardner, but she is now in Australia and ownership has passed to four of the trainer’s close but far-flung friends.
Messrs. Tynan, MacLennan, Shanahan and Magnier hail from Dublin, Scotland, Laois and Tipperary and ‘they are great guys,’ Pierce assured me.
They, all involved with the horse and many other supporters are hoping to have reason for a mighty celebration next Friday week.