Four Cheltenham winners began careers in Wexford

JUST ONE final look-back to the Cheltenham Festival from the point-to-point viewpoint: it was a triumph for Wexford handlers, and Colin Bowe in particular, with four of the big winners beginning their careers here in the county, three of them being Bowe graduates.

Samcro won a four-year-old maiden at Monksgrange, Rathnure, on debut in 2016 for Bowe and jockey Barry O’Neill, before subsequently changing hands for £335,000 to Gordon Elliott for Gigginstown.

Samcro won the Ballymore Grade 1 Hurdle at the 2018 Cheltenham Festival, hit a bit of a flat spot the following year, but came back to win the Grade 1 Marsh Chase by a nose in a great race with Melon and Faugheen.

Envoi Allen won his maiden at the Wexford Hunt meeting at Ballinaboola by ten lengths for Bowe and O’Neill on February 4, 2018. He was bought for Cheveley Park Stud a few days later for £400,000 at the Cheltenham sale and is unbeaten after eight races.

He won three Irish bumpers and then the champion bumper at Cheltenham last year under Jamie Codd; this season he won Grade 1s at Navan and Fairyhouse and followed up in the Ballymore Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Ferny Hollow won his point maiden at Knockenard in February, 2019, by 15 lengths for Bowe, under Jimmy O’Rourke; he was sold to Mullins for £300,000, having been bought by J.J. Bowe the previous June for €38,000, and was this year’s bumper champion.

Monkfish was the horse that denied Paul Nolan’s Latest Exhibition by inches in the Albert Bartlett Hurdle. This one was sent out by Cormac Doyle, youngest of the three training Doyle brothers from Monbeg, to win his point-to-point maiden at Stowlin in Galway on April 29, 2018.

He had been bought nine months earlier for €36,000, and was quickly sold on to Willie Mullins for Rich Ricci for £235,000.