Jockey Richie Condon rides Heaven Help Us to victory at Cheltenham. Trainer Paul Hennessy whose horse ‘Heaven Help Us’ snatched an impressive victory in the Coral Cup at the Cheltenham Festival opened up about the religious names of some of his other horses over the weekend.
Mr Hennessy said on RTÉ’s CountryWide that the winning horse’s siblings all have religious names. The mother of Heaven Help Us had three other foals, Mr Hennessy said, with the first called ‘First Friday’.
“I called him First Friday because my dad, God be good to him, had great devotion to the Sacred Heart on First Friday and my mum too. He won four races, first in Dundalk, he was a great character, he was a bit iffy, he maybe put his head in front and maybe wouldn’t but we had great sport with him,” he said.
The next foal was a filly called ‘Thy will be done’.
Mr Hennessy said the third foal “believe it or not, was born at 3pm on Good Friday and I said this is it, this is going to be the one that’s going to do everything, I called her Merciful Hour, as in the hour of great mercy, and I’m afraid it didn’t really work,” he laughed.