Yaha is Eamon for big things

YAHA FIZZ should prove tough to beat on his chasing bow in the J F Hanley Beginners Chase in Roscommon this evening.

Eamon Delany’s charge, which completed a hurdling hat-trick early last year, has always looked a chaser-in-the-making. And I’ve been looking forward to seeing him over the bigger obstacles.

Yaha Fizz began his winning sequence off 94 in January of last year and reached a career-high mark of 138 over hurdles.

And he was racing off 135 in the first of two starts for Gordon Elliott when runner-up to Low Sun in a Grade A handicap hurdle at Fairyhouse at Easter, form advertised when the winner landed another €100,000 pot in Galway on Saturday.

The selection was back in the Delany yard when dropping away tamely to finish last in the handicap hurdle won by Monarch at Bellewstown last month, after which he scoped badly and was found to have lost a shoe.

Assuming he’s fully recovered, Yaha Fizz is likely to bowl along in front and should prove a tough nut to crack, with Elliott’s Crezic the likely threat.

On what could prove another good day for Elliott, Elysian Plains appeals in the first three-year-old hurdle of the season.

Dinons sets the standard in the Paul Byron Shoes Maiden Hurdle.

And Just A Boy, narrowly beaten by Queens Boulevard on his first start in Sligo, might improve sufficiently to land the bumper, despite the presence of the Willie Mullins-trained debutante My Sister Sarah.

Elsewhere, Jessica Harrington took the Bank Holiday honours with an 88/1 across-the-card treble at the Curragh and Cork.

Highlight was the gutsy but narrow victory of class-dropping Chicas Amigas in the Mongey Communications 2-Y-0 Race at the Curragh.

The 6/4 favourite dug deep to deny Evasive Power by a short head and will step up to seven furlongs, in stakes company, next time.

Stable stalwart St Brelade’s Bay completed the Curragh double for Harrington and stable-jockey Colm O’donoghue when recording an emphatic win in the Curragh Training Grounds Handicap while the Commonstown trainer was also on the mark with Feeling The Love (Mark Walsh) which completed a hurdling hat-trick with a short-head defeat of Babanango in Cork’s Irish Examiner handicap Hurdle.

Also in Cork, former Grade 1 winner Arctic Fire, now with Denis Cullen, scooted home an impressive eight lengths winner of the Joe Walsh Memorial Hurdle, his first win since the 2017 County Hurdle at Cheltenham.

And, back at the Curragh, Paddy Twomey’s Foxtrot Liv (Billy Lee) earned a step-up into stakes company when slamming her rivals by six lengths in the two-year-old fillies auction maiden.