Training racehorses can sometimes feel like an uphill battle, but Henry de Bromhead is simply following a family trait.
One of his ancestors, Gonville Bromhead VC, was among the officers commanding at Rorke's Drift in 1879 and was immortalised by Sir Michael Caine in the 1964 film Zulu.
Now not a lot of people might know that, as Caine apparently never actually said himself, but plenty have become aware of De Bromhead’s skills as a trainer who is looking to cap his best season by winning the Stan James Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham today with Petit Mouchoir.
De Bromhead had a thorough grounding in racing before taking of the licence from his father, Harry, after he suffered a stroke and began with a bang when his first runner, Fidalus, won at Tramore on New Year's Day in 2000.
But he very soon learned to take nothing for granted. "We didn’t give the first lad any chance. So that was a nice surprise but then the next one, who was the favourite, got stuffed so that was a good introduction" he recalled with a nice line in self-deprecation.
That ability handle the curve balls served De Bromhead well again in August when Alan and Ann Potts, his longstanding patrons, decided to remove all 12 horses. Within weeks the empty boxes were filled by 15 horses sent by another owner, Michael O’Leary, after his own decision to decamp from Willie Mullins.
Among them was Petit Mouchoir, a promising novice hurdler for Mullins last season but without quite hitting the big prizes, and De Bromhead admits that the Champion Hurdle was not an immediate thought. “We were originally planning on going chasing,” he said. “But then Michael said that, as he was only a five-year-old, we didn’t need to be in a mad rush jumping a fence.”
Perhaps the horse himself had been in something of a rush in his early days with Mullins and De Bromhead points out that the front-running tactics which have proven such a potent weapon this winter have been a case of evolution rather than revolution. “Up to and including Cheltenham last year he’d been ridden to settle, with a hood and everything else,” he said. “And then at Aintree they rode him differently, whipped the hood off and let him roll.”
Petit Mouchoir was rolling like a winner when falling three out in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle in November but then won two Grade Ones in succession at Leopardstown, the Ryanair and Irish Champion Hurdles. Both were won from the front but De Bromhead is sure that this is not a one-trick pony. “People are cribbing the last day at Leopardstown , but Footpad [who finished second] is a very good horse and he ran it in three-forty-one which is very quick for two miles.
“We don’t have to make it with him. He just wants a nice, even gallop from the fall of the flag. If there’s someone there that’s going to go faster than that, great. And if there isn’t, it’s fine either way.
"It seems to be an open year, with mainly the novices from last year and horses like The New One. Our lad’s done very little wrong and, if he’d won the Fighting Fifth he’d be coming I off the back of three Grade Ones.
“I would never be overly confident, but he’s in good form and I’d be hoping for a good run," De Bromhead said, which translates from the self-deprecating into something like “we’re ready, are you?”
As ever, this family is primed to put up a fight.
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