On The Fringe© Photo Healy Racing
Enda Bolger reports On The Fringe none the worse after he was pulled up on his return to action at Cork on Sunday.
The former champion hunter chaser weakened before the third-last in testing conditions in the Mallow Hunters Chase and was pulled up before the next fence by Nina Carberry.
The 12-year-old, a dual winner at Cheltenham and Aintree, traditionally improves from his comeback run and Bolger expects him to do so again this term.
His next outing may now come in a point-to-point before he targets a remarkable seventh outing in the hunters chase which was traditionally run on Irish Gold Cup day at Leopardstown but has now been moved to Punchestown a week later.
Bolger said: "He's grand. Nina just said that the ground felt very, very heavy on him.
"He always takes his first run, or maybe two, and obviously he's getting older now. We got an outing into him, which was number one, but he just got very tired from the third-last so she decided to play it safe.
"What would be the ideal thing, if we can, is to get a point-to-point into him and then he'll probably go to Punchestown in February for the (race previously known as the) Raymond Smith Memorial that has been transferred there now from Leopardstown.
"He's fine and we'll still fiddle away with him and see how he is. He just got very tired as it was really, really soft.
"The race was so close to us, only half an hour from home, and it was an ideal day to get him out. Obviously I'd like to have seen him finish but Nina knows him so well and just said he got very tired.
"He'll be back to fight another day anyway."
