Meade aiming high with Affordale Fury

Noel Meade’s Cheltenham Festival runner-up Affordale Fury made a successful switch to fences at Galway on Sunday.

A silver medallist at a huge 150-1 in the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle back in March, he was also runner-up to Gaelic Warrior in the Grade One Irish Mirror Novice Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival and was an exciting chasing debutant in the Colm Quinn BMW Irish EBF Beginners Chase.

Sent off the 4-6 favourite, Affordale Fury’s jockey Sam Ewing positioned his mount hot on the heels of chief market rival and Grade Two-winning hurdler Favori De Champdou throughout and having matched strides at the final obstacle, the five-year-old’s abundant stamina took over in the run for home.

Although Favori De Champdou refused to lie down, Affordale Fury stayed on all the way to the finish to register a one-and-a-half-length success following a satisfactory round of jumping.

Meade said: “It is a bit of a relief as in beginners’ chases you never know what will happen. He was very good, though, and those ex-point-to-pointers are well schooled. We brought him to the Curragh a few weeks ago and he was really, really good.

“He would like a little nicer ground than that and got tired in the end, but he didn’t get as tired as the others.”

Affordale Fury is now set for a rise in class.

Meade added: “Where I’d love to be is in Leopardstown over Christmas for the Grade One novice over three miles. We’ll enter him for the Drinmore in between, but might instead run in the Grade Two Florida Pearl (at Punchestown) instead.”