Daddy Long Legs, by former champion three-year-old Almanzor and a €210,000 purchase by top connections after just missing out in a sole Flat run at Saint-Cloud, makes a big impression on his second career start - on debut for Willie Mullins and on his first appearance in Ireland and over jumps - to run out a striking winner from good novice benchmark Irish Panther at Thurles.
Ridden by Paul Townend and owned by Joe and Marie Donnelly - of Shishkin fame and a host of other high-class performers - Daddy Long Legs has a Grade One entry over Christmas and it certainly looks like such aims are not unfanciful after this winning performance by 13 lengths and one in which he finished with plenty in the tank, hitting the line really strongly.
Townend said after the race: "He was smart and quickened well for a horse who ran over 1m4f in France and I thought he justified a big price tag.
"What his future is I don't know but he couldn't have done any more than turn up and win the way he did. I hadn't sat on him a whole lot at home but he had been working well and from the first day I schooled him he was a natural to jump.
"He is a fine horse, won like we hoped he would and he would justify being in the Grade 1 novice hurdle at Leopardstown over Christmas. After that we'll learn more."
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