18 minute read
It was a Hollow victory
A fantastic Cheltenham Festival meeting was topped by Gold Cup winner Minella Indo, a son of Beat Hollow, writes Aisling Crowe
THE 2021 CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL will be written into the annals of Irish bloodstock as a remarkable one for the country’s thoroughbred breeding industry as 20 of the 28 contests over the four days were won by horses bred in Ireland.
Even more astoundingly the winners of nine of the 14 Grade 1 races were bred on the island, with three bred in Britain and just two in France, an unusually small return for French-breds at a meeting where they have enjoyed enormous success.
There were 17 different stallions represented by winners with a trio – Jeremy, Stowaway and Yeats – siring four winners apiece, while Sholokhov and Flemensfirth each sired a brace of winners.
There was more diversity amongst the broodmare sires with only three managing to double up – Turgeon, whose daughters produced Grade 1 winners Allaho and Vanillier, Saddler’s Hall had two Grade 2 winners in mares Colreevy and Telmesomethinggirl, while Supreme Leader was broodmare sire of the Gold Cup winner Minella Indo and Sky Pirate, winner of the Grand Annual Handicap Chase (G3)
Authorized, whose diminutive but adored son Tiger Roll became just the third horse to win five times at The Festival with his third Cross-Country Chase success, emphasised how big a loss it was when the Turkish Jockey Club managed to buy him from Darley ahead of the 2020 breeding season – he was the only stallion to be sire and broodmare sire of a winner. In the latter case he combined with another enormous loss in Jeremy to produce the Grade 1 Champion Bumper winner Sir Gerhard.
The Gold Cup winner Minella Indo is by the long-term Ballylinch Stud sire Beat Hollow. He is now the sire’s top-rated NH runner and leading prize-money earner- topping that title previously held by Wicklow Brave.
Minella Indo was bred by the Lalor family in 2013, the second year that beat Hollow stood in Ireland having moved from Juddmonte Farms’ Banstead Manor Stud.
Minella Indo is out of the homebred Supreme Leader-winning chase mare Carrigeen Lily and was sourced as a foal at the Tattersalls Ireland November Foal Sale by John Nallen, who does most of his buying of NH horses as foals, for €24,000.
Kept at his Clonmel base and coverted into a winning point-to-pointer he reappeared under Henry de Bromhead’s care after just that one point-to-point start as a five-yearold in 2018.
The eight-year-old has now run 16 times under Rules, won six races, finished third three times and second twice.
Apart from his bumper, his debut run over hurdles and his first two starts over fences, he has not run out of NH graded company wining three Grade 1 races in the process.
The eventual Gold Cup winner Minella Indo upsides Frodon on the first circuit of the Chetltenham Festival highlight
The other successful runner by Beat Hollow, who has a last crop of three-yearolds to sell this sumemr, and out of a Supreme Leader mare is also trained by De Bromhad – the six-year-old point-to-point winner Minella Escape owned by Alan Halsall. He had every chance of Grade 3 novice hurdle success at Navan in February until coming down two out.
Beat Hollow’s 13-year-old Group 2 winning son Sea Moon, who now stands at Burgage Stud, achieved a third placing in the St Leger and came home second in the Breeders’ Cup Turf behind St Nicholas Abbey (see page 78).
Of the 17 stallions who sired winners last week only four of them remain available to breeders and there are two stallions who enjoyed an especially successful Cheltenham Festival and who can benefit from their own success – Sholokhov and Yeats.
Sholokhov: Grade 1 double up
The Group 1 Gran Criterium winner may have been overshadowed a little by the trio of stallions who sired four winners apiece, but Sholokhov quietly enhanced a Cheltenham record that already boasted a Gold Cup winner with two Grade 1 stars in 2021; Shishkin and Bob Olinger.
A son of Sadler’s Wells, who was bred by the inimitable Jim Bolger, Sholokhov was also second to High Chaparral in the Irish Derby and runner-up to Hawk Wing in the Group 1 Eclipse, and achieved a feat that no other stallion could match at this year’s Cheltenham Festival as he had a stallion son join him on the scoresheet.
Sholokhov began his stud career at Gestüt Etzean where he stood for nine seasons during which time he sired Don Cossack, whose Grade 1 triumphs in 2015 might well account for Sholokhov siring his biggest foal crop to date in 2016, the year of Don Cossack’s Gold Cup success.
He moved to the Cashman family’s Glenview Stud for the 2013 breeding season meaning his first Irish-bred crop is now seven and it includes the brilliant Shishkin, who is unbeaten in eight completed. www.internationalthoroughbred.net 9
After his runner’s Arkle success trainer Nicky Henderson commented: “He did today look as good as either of the other two (Sprinter Sacre and Altior). He has got a long way to go before he comes into the same breath, but you couldn’t have asked him to do any more than that today.
“You would nearly say you would like to see a bit more height, but it doesn’t worry me – he is just very fast. He’s always been that way. He looks like a chaser and he acts like one. He is definitely a two miler and I don’t think you need to go any further he is just very natural at it.”
Victorious in the Grade 1 Arkle Chase by 12l for Nicky Henderson and Marie Donnelly, owner of dual Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo, Shishkin was bred by Clive Bennett and his late wife Eileen out of the Exit To Nowhere mare Labarynth.
Successful in three point-to-points, she is a half-sister to the Grade 1 Hatton’s Grace Hurdle winner Voler La Vedette, the Sandown Grade 3 handicap chase winner Hennessy and Molineaux, third in an Ascot Listed handicap chase.
Shishkin was sold by Rathbarry Stud at the 2014 Tattersalls Ireland November NH Sale to Ben Case and returned to Fairyhouse for the 2017 Derby Sale, where he was sold by Goldford Stud to Boyne Farm for just €28,000.
Third in an Inch four-year-old maiden, he then won at Lingstown for handler Virginia Considine and he made a handsome profit at the Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale where he was purchased by Highflyer Bloodstock for £170,000.
Labarynth has a five-year-old full-sister to Shishkin named Russian Maze, a fouryear-old Shirocco filly and a yearling colt by the sire, a two-year-old Karpino filly and returned to Sholokhov in 2020.
Bob Olinger is from Sholokhov’s second Irish-bred crop and his only defeat has come with his second place behind Ferny Hollow, with whom he grew up on breeder Ken Parkhill’s Castletown Quarry Stud, in a maiden hurdle at Gowran last November.
The dual Grade 1-winning novice hurdler was part of a history-making Cheltenham Festival for jockey Rachael Blackmore and trainer Henry de Bromhead and the first Festival winner in the Robcour silks of the Acheson family.
Sholokhov is also the grandsire of Galopin De Champs, who won the meeting’s finale, the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap hurdle, for Willie Mullins.
The pinpoint accurate Shishkin, the son of Sholokhov, jumps the last clear for Arkle glory
Galopin Des Champs is a son of Timos, who was bred in Germany and won two Listed contests for Thierry Doumen and was third in the Group 2 Prix Foy to Duncan and Nakayama Festa.
Timos retired to stud in 2012 and until 2017 was the only son of Sholokhov at stud in France, when Night Wish retired to Haras du Montaigu (see page 84).
With Timos’s last recorded season in 2018, the Group 1-placed Night Wish at Haras du Montaigu was Sholokhov’s sole stallion son in France until this spring when Guendale Star began his career at Haras des Etincelles. Both horses are striking individuals who strongly resemble their sire.
Yeats: coming of age
Royal Ascot’s modern-day monarch reigned over Cheltenham last week with the 20-yearold celebrating the best week of his stud career, siring the winners of four races at The Festival with two of them at the highest level.
Yeats is now the sire of seven individual Grade 1 winners, which may boost his book size this year. The four-time Ascot Gold Cup winner has fewer than 100 foals born in each of the past four years with just 50 three-yearolds registered although he has 80 yearlings and covered 116 mares last year.
A combination of the competition offered by younger stallions on the roster with a perceived lack of popularity at the store sales appear to have contributed to a decline in Yeats’s own attraction to mare owners, so much so that this is the fourth season in a row his fee has been advertised as €5,000.
With a day three treble on the greatest stage of them all, and smaller foal crops than many of his contemporaries, you would think that Yeats will receive a bigger book of mares this year.
The first of his Cheltenham winners was Chantry House in the Grade 1 Marsh Novices Chase, a race that had provided Yeats with his sole Festival success prior to 2021.
Shattered Love, the heroine of the 2018 running, was third in the new Grade 2 Mares’ Chase this time around, adding to her sire’s impressive results over the four days.
Chantry House was bred by Micheal Conaghan out of the Phardante mare The Last Bank and is a half-brother to the Grade 2 Pat Taaffe Handicap Chase third On The Shannon and Linnel, who was third in a Grade 3 Navan novice handicap chase.
The Last Bank is a half-sister to Morgiana Hurdle winner Nancy Myles and to Nancy’s Sister, who is the dam of Listed mares’ novice chase winner Mistletoe and second dam of Roadie Joe, winner of the Grade 2 Persian War Novices’ Hurdle for Evan Williams.
“You’d have to think he might be going over three miles sooner rather than later. I don’t see why not – it depends on how quickly they recover from these races as to whether he can go on to Aintree – but it looks as though he will be looking for three miles. He was about in top gear all the way, but when he got there he did it well and he quickened up well. We’ve got a lot of debriefing to do, but it looks as though three miles would help him.”
The seven-year-old was sold by Conaghan’s Evergreen Stud to John O’Brien at the Tattersalls Ireland November NH Sale for €12,500 and was due to be sold at the 2017 Derby Sale, but missed that engagement and instead was bought for €28,000 by Eric Elliott at the company’s August NH Sale from Mount Brown Farm.
He won his four-year-old point-to-point for Cian Hughes at Tattersalls Farm and sparked a bidding war five days later at the Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale which he topped when making £295,000 to Michael Hyde.
The Last Bank has a five-year-old Ocovango gelding named Gaelic Park, who was retained by Conaghan and is in training with Patrick Turley. Her four-year-old Soldier Of Fortune filly was bought back by Conaghan for €35,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale and has been named Helluva Girl.
She has a two-year-old Kingston Hill colt and foaled a full-brother to Chantry House last June.
Flooring Porter doubled his sire’s Grade 1 tally for the week with his front-running masterclass in the hands of Danny Mullins in the Stayers’ Hurdle for the Flooring Porter Syndicate and trainer Gavin Cromwell.
The six-year-old has ascended rapidly through the staying hurdle ranks with a handicap hurdle success leading to victory in Leopardstown’s Grade 1 Christmas Hurdle.
Flooring Porter under Danny Mullins made nearly all to take the Stayers’ Hurdle
Chantry House took the 2m4f Marsh Novices Chase and Henderson thinks he will step him up to 3m
The bonny Heaven Help Us skips clear of her field to take the Coral Cup. She was bred by her trainer Paul Hennessy, who is also a top greyhound trainer
The victory of Yeats’ daughter Heaven Help Us in the Grade 3 Coral Cup was probably the most popular of the meeting, and a case of David triumphing over Goliath.
Paul Hennessy, trainer and breeder of Heaven Help Us, is one of greyhound racing’s Goliaths with two English Derby winners under his belt and a host of other top-class successes, but when it comes to horseracing, the Kilkenny trainer was striking a blow for the smaller outfits.
“We bred her, she was born at home and I’ve raised her. The places she’s brought us are just ridiculous. It’s amazing. There she goes, she’s my Enable,” he told ITV Racing in the aftermath of her success under Richie Condon.
Hennessy has just three horses in training on his eight acres outside Gowran, where Heaven Help Us was born and reared alongside the greyhound string, about a mile away as the crow flies from the Purcell family’s Butlersgrove Stud, birthplace of Put The Kettle On who followed her former neighbour into the Cheltenham winner’s enclosure about 30 minutes later after her thrilling triumph in the Champion Chase.
We needed a miracle, and, Heaven Help Us, we got one.
“We’ve got three horses in training at home. Greyhounds is our career - we were lucky enough to win the English Derby a few times over here, one of which was for John Turner, who owns Heaven Help Us. We’ve always kept a mare at home, which we’d foal – that’s how this mare was born.
"We’ve got about 40 greyhounds now; we used to have maybe 100 at one stage. “The Mullins family introduced me to horses and we’d go to Pony Club and gymkhanas together, and going racing with Paddy was the great excitement. It was a great grounding for all the rest of it,” said Hennessy
Heaven Help Us is out of the Trans Island mare Spare The Air, owned by Hennessy and trained by neighbour Willie Mullins. Unsuccessful on the track, she has surpassed herself as a broodmare which isn’t surprising as she hails from the Moyglare Stud family of US champion two-year-old filly Talking Picture, fourth dam of Heaven Help Us
SPARE THE AIR Is a granddaughter of the Group 2 Premio Legano winner Easy To Copy (Affirmed), who is the dam of three black-type winners, including the Round Tower Stakes winner Desert Ease, who is the second dam of Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris and Sydney Cup winner Gallante.
Easy To Copy’s full-sister Trusted Partner is the second dam of Group 1 winners Free Eagle and Search For A Song, and the third dam of last season’s Group 1 National Stakes winner and Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes third Thunder Moon.
Heaven Help Us was born in 2014 and is the last foal of her dam Spare The Air, who died the same year she was foaled.
Chantry House and Mount Ida, who completed the Yeats Thursday treble, were born the same year.
Mount Ida was an unlikely winner of the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Handicap Chase, but the perseverance and talent of Jack Kennedy got the mare finally into a rhythm and then into the lead at the second last.
Bred by Philip Hore and offered for sale from the family’s Mount Eaton Stud at the 2017 Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale, she cost James Gillespie just €16,000.
Following her success in a Tattersalls Farm four-year-old mares’ maiden for Jerry Cosgrave, who also guided Honeysuckle to her point-to-point success, she was sold to Gordon Elliott for £70,000 at the Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale.
Out of the Dernier Empereur mare Jolivia, who won the Listed Prix Challenge des Haies des Quatrea Ans at Enghien, she is a half-sister to the Hennessy winner Sizing Tennessee.
Jolivia has a four-year-old Walk In The Park filly and three-year-old daughter by Flemensfirth. She also has a Kingston Hill two-year-old colt and saw Hillstar last year.
Young guns: Maxios and Ocavango
The nature of NH breeding makes it unsurprising that the successful stallions are at more advanced stages of their careers, but there was Grade 1 success for two stallions whose early careers have been full of excitement, no more so than No Risk At All
Haras du Montaigu’s My Risk half-brother to Grade 1 winner and sire Nickname had already secured Cheltenham glory with his first-crop courtesy of Epatante’s victory in last year’s Champion Hurdle.
While that mare did him proud with a gutsy third place in this year’s renewal it was his newest Grade 1 winner, who provided one of the equine highlights of 2021 with a sublime all-the-way success in the Grade 1 Festival Trophy Chase for owner Cheveley Park Stud, jockey Rachael Blackmore and trainer Willie Mullins, who was as stunned as everyone watching on by the gelding’s scintillating success
“Allaho did everything right. The first thing I did when Rachael came back in was lift her number cloth to see if the lead bag was in there as it looked like Allaho was just carrying Rachael around there!,” Mullins exclaimed. “He was just awesome. His galloping and his jumping, if you put it together – I was hoping he could do that over three miles but if he is only a two and a half mile horse that will do me.”
The seven-year-old gelding is also from
The smart Quilixios, by Maxios, heads out for Triumph Hurdle success under Rachael Blackmore
The wonderful mare Honeysuckle (Sulamani) settled mid-division in the Champion Hurdle field by Blackmore. The pair went on to win by over 6l
Allaho, who had been placed in Grade 1 novice contests at the previous two Cheltenham Festivals, is a half-brother to Spanish Moon mare Shanning, runner-up in a Listed mares hurdle for Mullins.
the first crop of dual Group 3 winner No Risk At All and was bred by Eric Leffray out of the Turgeon mare Idaho Falls, a full-sister to the Thyestes Chase runner-up Tarquinius.
Allaho has a four-year-old full-sister named Shannone and a yearling full-brother, who has been given the name Attaho. Their three-year-old Spanish Moon half-sister Shaving was purchased for €36,000 by JD Moore at Arqana’s 2020 Autumn Yearling Sale on behalf of Peel Bloodstock, who also own Fishcake, the Mahler half-sister. She was picked up for just €25,000 by Moore at last year’s Goffs Land Rover Sale.
Maxios sired his second Cheltenham Festival-winning four-year-old in as many festivals with Quilixios adding the Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle to Aramax’s success in the Grade 3 Fred Winter last year.
Quilixios was the first Grade 1 winner over jumps for Maxios when he won the equivalent race at February’s 2020 Festival.
That success was achieved in the care of trainer Gordon Elliott, but his Cheltenham victory was in his first start for De Bromhead, who was quick to praise the Cullentra House team.
“All credit to Gordon and his team; the horse looked amazing when he came down.
“We’ve done very little – it’s down more to them than to us. Everyone was very helpful, we knew he jumped really well and obviously we’ve seen him a good bit, and he’s been really impressive. He’s just a lovely horse to do anything with, gorgeous-looking, lots of size and scope, and will be a lovely chaser.”
MAXIOS WAS STANDING at Gestüt Fährhof in Germany when Quilixios’s dam Quilita (Lomitas) was covered, but he was born in the UK so boasts a GB suffix.
He was one of three Grade 1 wins at the meeting for British bred horses – Honeysuckle and the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle winner Black Tears the other two.
He was sold for €20,000 as a foal at Arqana’s December Sale by Haras d’Ombreville to Yan Durepaire. He made a winning debut over hurdles at Compiegne last March for trainer Francois Nicolle and owner Patrice Détré from whom he was bought by Nicolas Bertran de Balanda and Tom Malone for Cheveley Park Stud.
Quilita has produced a three-year-old colt by Kingman, who made 220,000gns to Juddmonte at the 2019 Tattersalls October Book 2 Sale. Named Colour Sergeant and in training with Ger Lyons, he ran seven times last year and was second five times and third on two more occasions. The subsequent Group 1 winners MacSwiney, Thunder Moon and Van Gogh were amongst the winners of those maidens.
Quilita’s Exceed And Excel two-year-old filly made €70,000 to Thomas Janda at last September’s Baden-Baden Yearling Sale.
She was bought by Joseph Burke at the 2019 Arqana December Sale for €26,000 from Haras d’Ombreville carrying to Charm Spirit and produced a filly last year before she was covered by Make Believe.
Ocovango’s first-crop son Langer Dan narrowly missed out on picking up the £50,000 bonus for winning the Grade 3 Imperial Cup and the Martin Pipe Hurdle when running second to Galopin Des Champs in the final race of the Festival.
Dan Skelton’s five-year-old is the first black-type performer from Ocovango’s first crop; his Grade 3 Sandown success following on from his win in the Listed Wensleydale Juvenile Hurdle.
Bred by Hugh O’Connor out of the Milan mare What A Fashion he was bought for €12,500 at the Tattersalls Ireland November NH Sale 2016.
What A Fashion is an unraced half-sister to three Graded winners out of a full sister to Aintree Bowl winner Celestial Gold and a half-sister to Cheltenham Grade 1 winner Fiveforthree and the dam of Grade 1 winner No More Heroes.
