Gale has too much puff for Jodami

Weight or age will eventually stop any horse, and it was a mixture of the two which reached out to grab Jodami, the 1993 Gold Cup winner, on the run to the last in yesterday's Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse. On the turn for home, Peter Beaumont's chaser seemed sure to emulate Desert Orchid by adding the feature race of Easter to his success at Cheltenham, but the energy drained from him with barely a furlong to run and it was Feathered Gale, under 10 stone, who galloped past to give Arthur Moore his first Irish National as a trainer.

It looked a most unlikely outcome with three fences to jump, with the British raiders Cool Dawn and Jodami still on the bit, Go Go Gallant marginally less so, and Feathered Gale being positively rowed along by Francis Woods. While Feathered Gale lacks a serious turn of foot, however, he does not stop either, and after he had jumped past Jodami at the final fence, victory was a formality.

Those who had backed him were rewarded at 8-1, but there was more disappointment than delight on the terraces as Jodami, eight lengths further back, had been supported down to 5-1 favourite on the day. Cool Dawn, at 15-2, was third, with Go Go Gallant and Charlie Swan fourth at 7-1.

Arthur Moore, who has won most of the races which matter several times over, took great delight in saddling his first Irish National winner, having taken the race as a jockey on King's Sprite in 1971. "It has always been my ambition to train the winner of this race, like my late father, Dan," Moore said. "Feathered Gale has had a light season and I see no reason why we will not go for the Whitbread [on 27 April]." Jodami is also a possible runner in the season's last major chase.

In Britain, the imminence of summer was underlined when Henry Cecil sent out his first winner of the Flat campaign. Despite the loss of Sheikh Mohammed's string, Cecil remains one of the major forces on the Flat, and he started a vital period -Bosra Sham, the 1,000 Guineas favourite, runs at Newbury on Friday week -in convincing fashion. Despite a drift in the market from 7-2 to 6-1, Magnificent Style routed her field in the opening maiden, apparently to the surprise of her trainer. "I didn't really fancy her much today, I thought she'd get a place at best," Cecil said.

Ray Cochrane must have felt much the same in two of yesterday's most valuable events, but in both the Quail Stakes and the Rosebery Handicap he arrived at the last possible moment to seize victory, at combined odds of over 70-1.

Hard To Figure, who at 10 years of age is just a season younger than Jodami, demonstrated that he has at least one more good campaign in him by beating Easy Dollar in the Quail Stakes, and given the grey's considerable popularity, the only real surprise was that he was allowed to start at 11-2. "He's a bit of a freak, and his full brother is totally useless," Ron Hodges, his trainer, said, "but I wish I had a few more like him. He even had an operation to remove fungus from his brain last year but it hasn't affected him at all."

Cochrane's mount in the Rosebery was Hazard A Guess, who hit the front just when a second successive victory in the race for Special Dawn, a 7-1 joint-favourite, seemed inevitable. "Ray gave him a great ride, but I certainly didn't ask him to leave it that late," David Nicholls, the winning trainer, said. "The owner is not here, he rang me this morning to say he'd had one too many glasses of red wine last night so he's watching it in front of the television." As hangover cures go, it surely beats Alka-Seltzer.