RACING at Fairyhouse on Saturday provided great excitement, especially in the first and last races on the card, though for very different reasons. Both of the winners were making their racecourse debuts.

I will start with the bumper winner Kaiser Ball, a French-bred son of the little-known Nom De D’La, a son of Lost World (Last Tycoon) and a Grade 3 chase winner at Cagnes-Sur-Mer as an eight-year-old, the year before he went to stud. A look at the career of Nom De D’La is a lesson in French breeding to some extent, given that he would have long ago been gelded in Ireland or Britain, and now be seeing out his retirement in a paddock somewhere.