RACING: Top amateur Derek O'Connor will visit the Turf Club in good mood today after learning that he will be riding Blazing Liss in the Wetherbys Champion Bumper next week.
The ride on the John Kiely trained mare, a general 7 to 1 shot for Wednesday's Grade One event, had been offered to the Michael Kinane but he now will not be travelling back from Hong Kong for his first visit to the Cheltenham Festival.
"There are Group Two and Group Three races on in Hong Kong during the week and the Hong Kong Derby is also on the horizon. He won't be coming back," said Kinane's agent, John Shortt, yesterday.
The Kiely family had already committed themselves to letting 21-year-old O'Connor from Co Galway ride Blazing Liss if Kinane was unavailable and they confirmed yesterday the situation hasn't changed.
What has changed is any fear that O'Connor might miss the middle day of Cheltenham due to an incident in a Co Down point-to-point on February 14yh that the Turf Club's Appeals & Referrals Committee will look into at 11.0 this morning. There had been concerns that any suspension would rule him out of a rare chance to compete with the professionals at the festival but the Turf Club chief executive played down any worries on that score.
"Because it is a first hearing, any ban that he might receive will not begin until nine days afterwards and it will apply to point-to-point dates only," said Denis Egan. The A&R committee will be looking at an incident at Comber where O'Connor won on the Ian Ferguson-trained Forresto and another horse ended up crashing against one of the hay bales used to mark the course.
The stewards disqualified the horse, ruled O'Connor guilty of intentional interference and referred him to the A&R committee.
The original date was set for last week but the hearing was postponed to today where Ferguson will also appeal the disqualification of Forresto.
O'Connor, who is on course to become champion amateur this season, has had a rapid rise through the ranks having ridden his first racecourse winner just over a year ago.
