HAVING recorded his first success on his sixth start at Carlisle last Thursday week, One Night In Milan followed up with his second just two days later at Kelso.
Trained by Keith Dalgleish and ridden on both occasions by 3lb-claimer Finian O’Toole, the five-year-old Milan gelding was a 5/1 shot when winning a handicap hurdle over just short of two and a half miles at Carlisle, while, in similar company over two miles five at Kelso, he was despatched as the 10/11 favourite.
One Night In Milan, who was bred in Dromore by Fred Mackey, is a half-brother to last season’s Grade 1 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Native River, being out of the Be My Native mare Native Mo. The bay was withdrawn from the 2013 Tattersalls National Hunt Sale as a foal and, when he appeared at Goffs Land Rover Sale three years later, he did so in a consignment from Redbridge Stables.
Tom Malone, in company with Paul Nicholls, gave €80,000 for the horse that day and, when he returned to the sales ring at Doncaster last May having been placed in a bumper in just three starts, it was the same Tom Malone who, this time acting on behalf of the horse’s present owner Richard Gilbert, only had to go to £15,000 to secure the gelding.
One Night In Milan is the 10th of 12 recorded foals out of Native Mo, who also bred the four-time winner Orpheus Valley, who was a Grade A scorer over fences. He was followed by fillies by Jeremy (2015) and Milan (2016).
From one Gold Cup-winning breeder to another – Lois Eadie, who bred the 2013 victor Bobs Worth. The Co Fermanagh artist’s name appeared as breeder of Monday’s Ayr winner Storm Nelson who landed the conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle for the Lucy Normile yard.
A five-year-old gelding by Gold Well, Storm Nelson, who was winning for the first time in eight starts, is the fifth of nine foals out of the Linamix mare Dabiyra who subsequently produced fillies by Shantou (2014) and Doyen (2015), a colt by Kalanisi (2016) and had a filly this year by Jet Away.