WHILE the number of Davids involved can make matters confusing, confusion is good if it means having winners as happened for owner/rider David Maxwell, trainer David Christie and his son and right hand man David junior at Ascot last Sunday.

Derrylin trainer Christie welcomed back Maxwell and Marinero to the winner’s enclosure at Ascot following their triumph in the two-mile, five-furlong hunters’ chase.

“I’d never been to Ascot before and I certainly never thought I’d have a winner there!” said David the trainer, who was joined at the Berkshire track by his daughters Amy and Debi.

David junior had brought over the horse on Saturday, and got to ride out on the track the following morning and his father had flown over from Ireland early on Sunday leaving wife Maggie at home in Derrylin.

Although David Maxwell lives quite close to Ascot, he too took to the skies on Sunday, hiring a helicopter to fly him to the Oakley Hunt point-to-point in Northamptonshire where he won a division of the maiden on the Kim Smyly-trained Big Bang De Loire. From Brafield-On-The-Green he flew to Ascot and was well rewarded for his efforts.

“These boys like David are few and far between,” commented Christie.

“He’s knowledgeable and understands racing. He is also very determined and, although he works in London (as a property investor), he keeps himself very fit. The horse didn’t handle the ground at Cheltenham (where he was pulled up in the Kim Muir) and the better it is the better he goes.

“Unfortunately, Sunday’s win came too late to qualify him for Aintree but we’ll probably bring him back to England in a month’s time for another hunters’ chase and then head to Stratford.”

David the trainer continued: “It was so wet here earlier in the spring that we could get nothing done. I was delighted to see the weather finally drying up.”