Adam Houghton on the rise and rise of Walk In The Park and Blue Bresil

The opening day of the Cheltenham Festival is a favourite in the calendar for most National Hunt racing fans, especially those who enjoy getting stuck into a short-priced jolly.

It promises to be another busy afternoon for those punters in 2023 as the meeting kicks off with two Grade Ones – the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and the Sporting Life Arkle – in which the market leaders are fast approaching ‘banker’ territory in the eyes of many.

For context, despite the Festival still being fully eight weeks away, Facile Vega is already as short as 11/10-on for the Supreme with the sponsors, while Jonbon is currently trading at a top price of 11/8 for the Arkle.

What do those two horses have in common other than carrying the hopes of swathes of ante-post backers on their shoulders?

For a change they’re not both trained by Willie Mullins. Facile Vega does indeed hail from that neck of the woods as Mullins seeks an eighth Supreme victory, but the most successful trainer in the history of the Festival must settle for having the next four in the ante-post betting for the Arkle behind the Nicky Henderson-trained Jonbon.

Instead, the main thing that Facile Vega and Jonbon have in common is that they share the same sire, namely Coolmore’s Grange Stud resident WALK IN THE PARK, who is now well established as one of the most influential National Hunt stallions in the sport having produced multiple top-level winners in recent years.

The first horse to really put his sire on the map was Douvan, who was conceived in 2009 at a time when Walk In The Park – runner-up in the 2005 Derby and even tried over hurdles in a varied racing career for John Hammond – was standing his second season at Haras du Val Raquet in Normandy at a fee of just €3,000.

Douvan would later develop into the best horse Mullins has ever trained according to Timeform ratings, with two of his most memorable performances coming when he delighted favourite backers on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival in consecutive years in 2015 and 2016, winning the Supreme at 2/1 the first year before returning 12 months later to win the Arkle at 4/1-on.

Judgement days beckons for Facile Vega and Jonbon

So, the big question now is whether Walk In The Park can double his tally in each of those races with the aforementioned Facile Vega and Jonbon, both of whom already have experience of the Festival from last year, the former when an impressive winner of the Champion Bumper and the latter when runner-up to Constitution Hill – more on whom shortly – in the Supreme.

And that’s not the only way in which they have Festival pedigree. After all, Facile Vega is out of the six-time Mares’ Hurdle winner Quevega, while Jonbon is a full brother to none other than Douvan, who won eight Grade One races in total for Mullins but was plagued by injury in the years after his Arkle success.

Everything Facile Vega and Jonbon have done so far suggests they might be capable of following in the footsteps of those Cheltenham greats before them, but the team associated with Walk In The Park at Grange Stud are understandably taking nothing for granted as the build up to that special week in the Cotswolds starts to gather steam.

“It’s never the gimme that people think,” said Grange Stud’s manager Albert Sherwood when I joined the crowds there on Saturday as part of the Irish Stallion Trail.

“You still need to have the best horse there to deliver. I think when it comes to Cheltenham and the major festivals, for any stallion it’s nearly an accomplishment to have runners there. And if you get winners, it’s a bonus because everybody is there.”

Walk In The Park embarked on his first season at Grange Stud in 2016 – nearly a year after Douvan had given his sire a breakthrough Cheltenham Festival winner in the Supreme – and his stock had risen so much by then that he covered 224 mares that year.

By way of comparison, Douvan’s dam Star Face was one of just 39 mares Walk In The Park covered in his second season at Haras du Val Raquet in 2009. The following year he covered only 27 mares but still managed to produce Min, another top-class performer for Mullins and owner Susannah Ricci.

At Cheltenham alone Min managed to fill the runner-up spot behind Altior in both the 2016 Supreme and 2018 Queen Mother Champion Chase before finally gaining a deserved Festival success in the 2020 Ryanair Chase.

It wasn’t just the quantity of mares that Walk In The Park covered in his first season at Grange Stud that impressed, either. There was plenty of quality in his book to go with it and Quevega was just one of several Grade One-winning mares he covered that year, with the others including Bitofapuzzle, Glens Melody and Refinement.

Walk In The Park only just getting going

Facile Vega, the product of that first meeting between Walk In The Park and Quevega, is the most high profile member of that maiden Irish-bred crop, but he is far from alone with Ashroe Diamond also starring last season when she won the Grade Two mares’ bumper at Aintree.

Last seen finishing third behind stablemate Facile Vega in the Future Champions Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown’s Christmas fixture, Ashroe Diamond will be another key runner for her sire at the Cheltenham Festival if lining up in the Dawn Run Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle.

Throw into the mix the Champion Bumper contender Fascile Mode and the useful novice hurdler Inothewayurthinkin – both members of Walk In the Park’s second Irish-bred crop – then it’s fair to say that the sire has made a very promising start to life at Grange Stud where the public flocked to see him during the two days of the Irish Stallion Trail.

“A lot of the people calling in here today wouldn’t have mares,” Sherwood said. “They just want to see the horse because they know the name and there is that sort of charisma around him.

“We’re delighted with the way his first Irish crop are progressing. They’ve just turned six and it looks like he’ll be capable of getting a good horse like Douvan or Min again, the best horses he sired from his small crops in France.

“We’re looking forward to the future to see how they develop and he’s given every indication that he’s capable of siring more good horses like that. The initial promise is there and hopefully he’ll be able to follow through on that.”

The best way for Walk In The Park to follow through on that promise would be to fire in a Grade One double on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival – a double which currently pays around 7/2 at the best available odds for those interested.

Beyond that, there must be a very real chance that Walk In The Park is still only getting going as a sire of top-class jumpers. Soon to enter his eighth season at Grange Stud, the son of Montjeu is still waiting for the bulk of his Irish-bred crops to hit the racecourse and, most excitingly, there could be at least a couple more years left in him yet despite his advanced age.

Sherwood added: “He’s 21 now, but he’s looking great and he’s the most fertile horse in the world. We’ll try and mind him for the next couple of years and hopefully we’ll get a couple more years out of him rather than abusing him now.

“Like every stallion you bring into the place, you hope they’ll be successful. Not all of them will be, but this fella had all the credentials before we got him. Hopefully, he’s delivering on them now and he’ll leave a legacy behind both at the stud and in the country from his time being here.”

Close neighbours teeing up Festival treble

It could be quite the celebration in Fermoy, County Cork if the first three Grade One races on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival pan out as the ante-post betting is predicting.

The Champion Hurdle is the showpiece event on the card and features arguably the biggest banker of the entire meeting in the shape of Constitution Hill, who hasn’t looked back since kicking off last year’s Festival with a bang when beating stablemate Jonbon by 22 lengths in the Supreme.

Now unbeaten in five starts over hurdles by a cumulative margin of 77 lengths, Constitution Hill is fast becoming the poster boy for National Hunt racing and so too for his sire BLUE BRESIL, who stands at Glenview Stud, located just a 15-minute drive from Grange Stud.

My colleague John Ingles touched on Blue Bresil’s racing career in this article, written shortly after Constitution Hill’s latest romp in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton on Boxing Day, and he certainly doesn’t have the profile of your typical stallion standing in Britain or Ireland.

Group Two-placed on the Flat as a three-year-old, Blue Bresil is that rare thing on these shores of a National Hunt stallion who actually raced over jumps himself, like Walk In The Park before him.

And whereas Walk In The Park only dipped his toe in the water over hurdles with one failed attempt before that experiment was abandoned, Blue Bresil went in head, shoulders and all when having five runs over timber at Auteuil as a four-year-old. He failed to win any of them but still proved himself a very adept jumper, notably finishing placed in Graded company on three different occasions.

Still, a horse like that would have struggled to find a place at stud in Britain or Ireland – he probably would have been gelded before he ever jumped a hurdle – but they do things differently in France and Glenview’s Paul Cashman is full of praise for what could be considered a more open-minded approach when it comes to breeding racehorses over there.

“That’s the great thing about the French horses,” Cashman began. “The French breeders will give every horse a chance. They breed to race, whereas we’re breeding to sell. We’re more commercially driven in Ireland and England.

“The French ethos is probably a way better system because every sire gets a chance, no matter what breed they are or what they’ve done on the racecourse.”

From humble beginnings to big-name sire

Blue Bresil spent the first few years of his stud career at Haras de la Croix Sonnet in Normandy and his nomination fee in his final season there in 2015 stood at just €1,500.

There had at least been signs of promise in those early French-bred crops, though, and Blue Bresil first came to the attention of British and Irish racegoers during the 2015/16 season when his most high-profile runners included Ibis du Rheu, a Cheltenham Festival winner when landing the Martin Pipe, and Le Prezien, a Grade Two-winning novice hurdler.

Blue Bresil relocated to Yorton Farm Stud near Shrewsbury for the 2016 breeding season and his fee increased every year he stood there – from £2,750 in 2016 to £6,000 in 2019 – as his better runners started to take their nascent steps on the racecourse.

They included the likes of Royale Pagaille, who is now well established as a high-class chaser for the Venetia Williams stable, and the French mare L’Autonomie, a top-class hurdler who retired last year as the winner of 17 of her 27 starts.

Soon to enter his fourth season at Glenview after moving there in 2020, Blue Bresil has continued to go from strength to strength during his time in Ireland and his book of mares in 2022 stood at a mammoth 256, an opportunity that just wouldn’t have been there had he stayed in Britain or France.

“Every year he stood in England his fee increased slowly and to a level where he was very popular at the end of it,” Cashman explained. “He got 100+ mares in his last season in England and for a horse to do that in England is very good because the breeding mares are not there generally.

“Since he’s been here, he’s really gone and kicked on to another level again for everyone concerned. When you have a horse at that level you start getting the better-quality mares and that augurs well as the years go by. The quality of mares he’s getting now is on an upward curve the whole way.

“His outcross is great – he’s by Smadoun and out of an Exit To Nowhere mare – but for me his temperament is probably his biggest asset. He’s such a laidback horse himself and he’s passing that on to his stock.

“That’s half the battle with a lot of them and when you see them at the sales you can nearly pick out a Blue Bresil when they come out of the box. That’s great to see in a sire, too, he’s really stamping his stock.”

Hill far from the only horse to follow

That unflappable temperament is certainly something we associate with Constitution Hill – who was conceived during Blue Bresil’s first season at Yorton Farm in 2016 – and the team at Glenview are as excited as anybody to find out just where his ceiling might lie over the next few years.

In the meantime, all eyes will be on him when he tries to complete his ascent to the top of the two-mile hurdling tree with victory in the Champion Hurdle, though Cashman is keen to point out that there is plenty else to look forward to with Blue Bresil’s progeny besides that.

He said: “Obviously, you’ve got Constitution Hill, but there is Blue Lord with Willie Mullins as well. He’s progressed again this year and I was talking to Willie the other day who said he’s probably improved around 14-lb to do what he did at Leopardstown, which surprised even Willie himself.

“You’ve got the likes of Inthepocket who won a point-to-point and has gone on with Henry de Bromhead to win a Grade Two in Naas the other day. He looks very exciting and then you’ve got Good Land of Barry Connell’s who was very impressive in his maiden hurdle at Leopardstown. He’s going for a Graded race at the Dublin Racing Festival.

“Colin Bowe had a good four-year-old called Willmount who won a point-to-point in February last year. He sold him at the sale during the Cheltenham Festival for £340,000 and Neil Mulholland won a bumper with him at Doncaster the other day by 13 lengths.

“That’s what you love to see is the young stock coming through – the next generation.”

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