A gamble on the Liz Doyle trained newcomer Cheltenian came agonisingly close to being landed in the concluding Punchestown INH Flat Race but Wandering Aengus and Jamie Codd hadn't read the script and refused to yield up the straight, in the end prevailing by a length and a quarter.
The victorious son of Tobougg, also a first-timer, made virtually all and with the rail to help he kept on too strongly for Cheltenian, who wandered a bit when delivering his challenge under Mikey Fogarty.
Wandering Aengus himself didn't go unbacked (33s in the morning into 16/1) and Patrick Prendergast his trainer remarked: "We fancied him a bit as he'd won a schooling bumper at Dundalk from a horse that went on to win a bumper in England and they left the third horse there back at the toll bridge!
"Just to be sure he went to Limerick for another school and he won down there by thirty lengths under Garrett Cotter. He is a good galloper and he will make a real nice three mile chaser.
"I hadn't looked beyond today but he could go for a winners bumper. He is for sale."
Wandering Aengus is trained at Melitta Lodge on the Curragh where Patrick's father Paddy was based and this promising young gelding is owned by Patrick's wife Grainne.
