“I LOVE it when a plan comes together,” was the wrap up phrase of Lieutenant Colonel “Hannibal” Smith after successful missions in the hit ’80s TV show The A Team.

But the times where there was a simple plan and everything exceeded expectations often gives us some great tales of achievement. None more so that when dealing with horses.

The legendary Red Rum started his career running in low-value races as a sprinter and dead-heated in a five-furlong flat race at Aintree, long before he became one of the most famous racehorses, winning the Grand National over big fences and four and a half miles.

The Gold Cup winner Norton’s Coin had neither pedigree nor trainer to create expectations of winning the ultimate prize in jump racing - the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

The flat kingpins in Darley didn’t want Tiger Roll, gone for a £10,000 price tag.

And, have you heard the one about the point-to-point trainer who bought, broke and first raced one of the leading fancies for the ‘race that stops a nation’ on the other side of the world, the 2024 Melbourne Cup?

Biggest handicaps

It’s safe to say when point-to-point handler Aidan Fitzgerald went to the sales and came home with a daughter of Shantou, costing €9,000, he never thought she would be winning one of the biggest handicaps of the season in the Ebor at York, never mind putting herself in line for a tilt at one of the most famous flat races in the Melbourne Cup.

Fitzgerald, along with Enda McDonagh, bought the three-year-old Magical Zoe from Mountain View Stud at the 2021 Goffs Land Rover sale.

“We loved the way she walked. She had a lovely pedigree and came from a very good yard. We thought she wasn’t big enough for point-to-pointing but we couldn’t leave her behind because we loved her so much. We decided we’d go straight for a bumper,” he remembers.

Into training with brother Barry, she made a winning debut in a bumper at Cork in March 2022, winning back over half her purchase price.

“We did a good bit of work with her and gave her over to my brother Barry. She went to him in November/December and she won in March, we knew then she was good.”

The mare brought a nice return on investment for Fitzgerald, being then bought by Alex Elliott at the Goffs UK Aintree Sale in April 2022 for £140,000.

Her hurdling career has brought three wins and saw her take a second place in the Grade 2 Jack De Bromhead Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival.

“She was very good last year but still a bit unlucky. A couple of things didn’t work out for her through the year,” Fitzgerald explained. Her Ebor success now put her earnings near the €500,000 mark for owners Patrick and Scott Bryceland.

“Henry’s done an unbelievable job with her, we are thrilled how she’s turned out,” her former owner said reporting “great excitement” watching the big win on Saturday. There is an extra happy connection as she is named after Barry’s daughter Zoe.

Was there any indication of how good she might have become? “She wasn’t the biggest, but she had an unbelievable walk,” he says.

And come November, if she lines up at Flemington, she might be taking on the current Mullins-trained favourite Vauban, with a little bit of extra spice. “Willie and Harold were the underbidders, we’d told them to buy her as well.” There’ll be a lot of early morning risers if the mare who learned her trade on the gallops in Carlow, lines up for that big A$8 million prize.