DRAPERSTOWN trainer Noel Kelly is enjoying a great winning streak of late and saddled at double at Sligo on Wednesday evening.

Jody McGarvey initiated the brace in the extended two and a half-mile handicap hurdle on the What’s It All About Syndicate’s seven-year-old Presenting gelding That’s Me Finished, and then Oran McGill completed it in the concluding bumper on Victor McCrea’s High Court Cave.

The four-year-old Court Cave gelding was sent off at 2/1 on the back of his fourth-place finish, following a stumble, at the Galway Festival and his win, on his third start, of a point-to-point maiden at Toomebridge in May.

Kelly had this to say about his Stewartstown owner: “Victor is a cattle dealer and the last three horses that he’s picked out himself at the sales, including this one, have all won for him. He’s a good judge.”

OWNERS and riders from Northern Ireland enjoyed considerable success at the Dublin Horse Show but there were mixed results for equine physiotherapist Sharon Kelly-Murphy.

Her two-year-old Annaghmore Flo Pleasure was second in his colts and geldings’ class but the bay’s year-older half-brother Annaghmore Dunkirk, who was one of the favourites to take the overall youngstock title, was totally overlooked and wasn’t even placed in his class.

While the owner will have to put that reversal down to the vagaries of showing, it was a disappointing outcome for her nieces Tori (12), Lauren (nine) and Freya (eight) Beckett who travelled down to Dublin with their mother Stacy. Yes, she’s the Kelly who did win the Dingle Derby back in 1995.

Among the many people I met at the show were bloodstock agents Kevin and Anna Ross who, this weekend, are enjoying life with the family in a camper van at the final Blair Castle international horse trials where their daughter Holly is competing two ponies, Star Of Hollymount and Ech Feirin.

I also met Ian Wilson, who is meant to be riding in the Celebrity Challenge at the Saintfield Horse Show today, and Wilson Dennison who is not as his hunters aren’t in yet.

PATSY Cosgrave and Oisin Orr have had a few winners on the flat in Britain of late while Dylan Browne McMonagle continues to notch them up at home.

He has also been on his travels abroad and followed up a win in the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Berlin at Hoppegarten, Germany, on August 11th on the Joseph O’Brien-trained Al Riffa, the 3/5 favourite (who knew that was a thing?), by landing a double on two other short-priced market leaders at Deauville last Saturday.

The Co Donegal jockey struck first in the listed mile race for two-year-olds with the O’Brien-trained Wootton Bassett colt Apples And Bananas, a Killarney maiden winner, and then joined forces with English trainer Ollie Sangster to win the Group 2 Prix du Calvados for two-year-old fillies on Simmering, a bay daughter of Too Darn Hot.

ON a serious note, the sponsor My Pension Expert may want you to unlock your pension potential but they would also like female racegoers to unlock their wardrobes and presses in their search for the perfect outfit to win their most appropriately-dressed lady competition at Downpatrick on Monday.

Don’t worry, they most certainly do not tolerate discrimination when it comes to couture at the Co Down racecourse so you men can also feel free to look for the perfect outfit in a bid to win the Randox Health best dressed gentleman competition. What else would you be doing on a Bank Holiday Monday?

One would hardly have time to put Monday’s outfit away before getting another one out for the Musgrave NI race evening at Down Royal on August 30th.