Cheltenham Festival Focus

When compared with other leading trainers at the Cheltenham Festival, such as Willie Mullins, Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, Henry de Bromhead, who is based in Knockeen, Co. Waterford, is very much the ‘new kid on the block’. That said, he did saddle his first Festival winner, Sizing Europe, in the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 2010, but he has since increased his winning tally to 15, including 13 at Grade One level.

Sizing Europe followed up in the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2017, when Special Tiara won the same race for the yard, that de Bromhead really started to emerge as a force majeure at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2018, he won the Ryanair Chase with Balko Des Flos, in 2019, the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle with Minella Indo and, in 2020, added two more Grade One winners to his tally, courtesy of Put The Kettle On in the Arkle Challenge Trophy and Honeysuckle in the Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle.

Even so, the best was yet to come for de Bromhead. At the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, he not only saddled six winners, five of them at Grade One level, but also became one of the few trainers to complete the Champion Hurdle – Cheltenham Gold Cup double, courtesy of Honeysuckle and Minella Indo. In fact, he saddled the same number of winners as leading trainer Willie Mullins and although beaten, fairly comprehensively, on countback, did have the satisfaction of seeing his stable jockey, Rachael Blackmore, make history by becoming the first female jockey to win the leading jockey award.

Rupert ‘Ruby’ Walsh, who retired from race riding, with immediate effect, after winning the Puchestown Gold Cup on Kemboy on May 1, 2019, has the distinction of being the most successful jockey in the history of the Cheltenham Festival. Indeed, he was leading jockey at the Festival a record eleven times – in 2004, 2006, 2008-2011 and 2013-2017 – and his career total of 59 winners at the March showpiece meeting is some way ahead of his nearest rival, Barry Geraghty, with 43.

‘Mr. R.Walsh’, as he was listed on the racecard, opened his Cheltenham Festival aboard Alexander Banquet – also, coincidentally, the first of 213 Grade One winners he rode during his career – in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 1998. Walsh turned professional later that year and, over the next two decades, won each of the four main ‘championship’ races at least twice apiece.

Arguably his most memorable victories came aboard Kauto Star in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 2007 and, especially, in 2009, but he also won the Champion Hurdle four times, the Queen Mother Champion Chase four times and the Stayers’ Hurdle five times. Indeed, he won the Stayers’ Hurdle, known at the time as the ‘World Hurdle’, on the same horse, Big Buck’s, four years running in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Just for good measure, Walsh also won the Ryanair Chase – introduced to the Festival programme in 2005, as a ‘championship’ steeplechase over the ‘intermediate’ distance of 2 miles 5 fulongs – four times, most recently on Un De Sceaux in 2017. He rode his final Cheltenham Festival winner, Klassical Dream, in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2019.