Jockey Angle with Paddy Flood: A Star For Amo On this week's episode of ‘The Jockey Angle’, brought to you by William Hill, Paddy Flood's analysis features a skilful ride from Downpatrick, a comical incident from Newmarket and a horse with a lot of ability from Navan. Race replays are FREE to watch from all Irish tracks and a selection of premier British tracks sponsored by William Hill. Paddy Flood’s Analysis I suppose a lot of people probably didn't see this coming. Amo Racing with a horse running in a maiden Hurdle. The Emmet Mullins-trained, Amo-owned and Donagh Meyler-ridden Dallas Star was once rated 107 on the flat. So, a really good standard of a horse. He finished second a close second to the likes of Kyprios and Scandinavia in the past. A horse with a lot of ability. I was as surprised as anyone when I heard what was going to happen. That Amo was giving horses to Emmet. Who knows, this could be the start of a really good partnership because I'm sure Emmet Mullins will be looking to invest in flat horses with the facilities he's after buying from Jim Bolger. Top, top class facilities, gallops, stables, everything about it. It's an amazing yard and very best of luck to him. I really, really like Donagh. I think he's in the top five in Ireland. He's very underrated in my opinion. If you watch Donagh’s hands just before the first, he actually picked up the hands just to kind of organise the horse a little bit. I'd say he was running a touch keen into the bridle. When you're doing that with a horse, a green horse basically, he's plenty of racing done, but if you have a horse having his first run over hurdles that has never run on the flat, most of them will go down to the first kind of backing off. So you nearly have to give them a squeeze and force them down. This guy is the opposite. Donagh had to lift the hands off the neck and he had to take control. He's a fine big galloping looking horse to be fair to him. He nearly rides with a toe in the iron. He's got a really strong leg, good pair of hands, and he approaches his jumps exceptionally well. His right hand comes up. He's actually not taking a pull out of the horse. You see a good few riders doing this. You're just keeping the bit real tight up into his mouth so he doesn't actually make a mistake. You're letting them know that you do not want a big jump here, you're just saying, I just want you to um come back, stay at this sort of speed. You can jump it, but I don't want anything extravagant. Watch The Jockey Angle in Full Donagh had to stay in control and he made the horse listen to him. This is kind of what I like about this horse. He's getting squeezed along. He was good, long and low at that, but he was brave. And that's the main thing. You need that in the horses that come off the flat. A lot of them aren't the bravest in the world. They can mind themselves a bit, but he went down to that. It basically was the last hurdle because the last was omitted, but he went down there and he fired himself at it. Now, he just got there, but he was good enough to go and do that. For me, I actually thought it was a really good win. A little bit of an education would have been gained in this run. I think he'll improve off it again and I think we'll see plenty of this guy in the winter.
