Kelly’s stable star and Gold Cup favourite makes a stunning reappearance

PAT Kelly doesn’t do panic. He leaves that to the growing fan base of arguably the most popular Irish racehorse in training which made a spectacular seasonal reappearance at Gowran Park last Thursday.

Presenting Percy’s return to the racecourse had been long delayed due to the untypical benign winter weather which left most tracks reporting ground conditions on the good side, but the wraps were finally taken off the ante-post Gold Cup favourite in Kilkenny.

Having missed a couple of engagements, including the Christmas festival at Leopardstown, fans of the horse were getting restless and twitchy: wondering would they see the eight-year-old run at all this season if the rains didn’t come.

All the while, Craughwell-based trainer Kelly was holding his nerve and exercising the kind of patience which probably even tested the tolerance of the horse’s owner, Philip Reynolds.

Against that background, it came as no surprise after Presenting Percy stormed home in the Galmoy Hurdle at Gowran Park that Reynolds admitted some friends and acquaintances were starting to wonder had the horse being ‘retired’.

It is easy for a big trainer with a string of good horses to bide his time when it comes to doing what’s best, but Kelly is at the opposite end of the scale. He could have reacted to public pressure and expectation. He didn’t. He knows Presenting Percy better than anyone.

Kelly, who was training Galway Hurdle winners as far back as the early nineties, has long-since earned the right to make the calls with his stable star, particularly as he delivered the horse in perfect nick to win at the last two Cheltenham festivals.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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