De Bromhead can win Festival battle against the odds
TRAINING National Hunt horses in Ireland must sometimes feel like a battle against insurmountable odds, facing the talent factory of champion trainer Willie Mullins and the winning machine driven by Gordon Elliot.
That Henry de Bromhead is coping better than most might be down to his genes. Following a branch of the De Bromhead family tree brings you to British army officer Lt Gonville Bromhead, who was awarded the Victoria Cross at Rorke’s Drift in 1879.
In the fierce hand-to-hand combat, Bromhead ordered his men to ‘not waste one round’. The same words could also be used for how Henry has aimed his horses this season.
De Bromhead is enjoying his best-ever season, with 65 winners and almost €1.5million in prize-money placing him third in Ireland’s trainers’ championship.
Almost a quarter of the 60 De Bromhead horses that tackle the gallops overlooking Waterford will be heading to the Cheltenham Festival next week, trying to add to his three previous winners there — two of them, the 2010 Arkle Novices’ Chase and 2011 Queen Mother Champion Chase, landed by his best known horse Sizing Europe.
Among them will be Petit Mouchoir and Champagne West, Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup hopes respectively. Neither horse was in the stable a year ago. Main owners Alan and Anne Potts removed a dozen horses in August, among them Cheltenham-bound 2017 Irish Gold Cup winner Sizing John.
But De Bromhead, 44, whose father Harry enjoyed Festival success with Fissure Seal in the 1993 running of what is now the Pertemps Hurdle Final, bounced back.
He benefitted from the fallout between Michael O’Leary and Mullins, which led to 60 horses, including Petit Mouchoir, being moved from the Gigginstown Stud.
Champagne West had been trained by Philip Hobbs in England but moved to Ireland when owner Roger Brookhouse increased his backing for De Bromhead, who reflected: ‘The horses coming in made it a bit easier but to lose the likes of Sizing John was tough.
‘There were three or four horses we were really sorry to see leave the yard but of all the horses that went, he was the one. But he is not my horse now, Champagne West is and we are in an unbelievable position after a fantastic year.
‘We have more strength in depth for Cheltenham but it is easy to enter them. It gets a bit more realistic when you are there.’
De Bromhead took over from his father in 2000 and trained the first winner of the new millennium in Europe when Fidalus won at Tramore.
But the man who had worked for British trainers Sir Mark Prescott and Robert Alner and the Coolmore Stud, admits he took some persuading that training was for him.
‘Dad had some good years but some pretty tough. I just couldn’t get away from it and when he had a minor stroke in 1999, he said he was going to finish and it was now or never.’
It was when Champagne West defied top weight to easily win the prestigious Thyestes Chase at Gowran Park — a race Harry won 25 years earlier with Grand Habit — that Gold Cup dreams became a reality.
The trainer said: ‘There were some fairly well informed guys impressed by him.’
Petit Mouchoir, winner of the Grade One Ryanair Hurdle and the Irish Champion Hurdle, will try to erase what must be one of De Bromhead’s most painful memories. In 2008, Sizing Europe started favourite for the Champion Hurdle but was pulled up, weakening dramatically two hurdles from the finish.
Bromhead said: ‘Unfinished business? Even without the history it’s a race you’d love to win. Sizing Europe looked to be going very well and didn’t finish the race. It’s great to get another crack at it.’