A horse bought for a bargain on a used car website was a winner at the Grand National meeting on Friday.
Fennor Cross won for the third time in his career when he captured the £75,000 William Hill Handicap Hurdle at Aintree.
It was his biggest win since he was bought by owner Andrew O’Brien for just £1,200 on the classified website ‘Done Deal’ and took his earnings past £100,000.
He said: “A lot of people don’t believe this, but I bought the horse as a yearling off a classified website called Done Deal. I saw him on the site and I went and looked at him, he was a big leggy lad who needed time but I got him for €1,400.
“I was in-between just browsing and looking for a horse to buy really. I saw his page and he has winners all down the line, he was a half-brother to four winners. He was a big lad when we got him and he needed a lot of time.”
O’Brien syndicated the horse with pals Seamus Dardis and Fergal McGuinness to form ‘The Positivity Syndicate’ and speaking after the race revealed he is hoping that the six year old can carry on improving yet.
“We’ve certainly had to show patience with him” he said. “He didn’t make up into a two-year- old so he ran his first race for us as a three-year-old at Galway on the Flat. He came in after it and we found out he had a slight setback, so he was off for a long time after that.
“John (McConnell, trainer) did a fabulous job after that and we got four wins out of him coming into the new Jumps season. I would have been happy with winning a little 0-65 Flat race with him, but then he started growing into himself and getting stronger. He started to look more like a jumper, so we tried him over hurdles and he hasn’t looked back.
"We’ve bagged £43,000 for winning that race so we’re very happy! You get lucky once with these things and that’s it. To get a horse like that you have to be very lucky. I have another horse myself, though she’s not as good as him!”
