Donn McClean paid a visit to training giant Henry De Bromhead to get the latest on his strong team for the 2025/26 jumps season proper.
Henry de Bromhead got the ferry home after racing on the last day of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival.
Honeysuckle had won the Champion Hurdle, Put The Kettle On had won the Champion Chase, Minella Indo had won the Gold Cup, and A Plus Tard had chased him home. It was an historic achievement; unprecedented. The three jewels in the Cheltenham Festival crown, and all three were on their way back to Knockeen.
Three weeks later he would send Minella Times out to win the Aintree Grand National, Rachael Blackmore riding, glass ceiling shattered, in an achievement that was so fanciful just a generation ago that they made a movie about it and labelled it make-believe. And Balko Des Flos finished second behind his stable companion at Aintree to provide the trainer with the 1-2 in the most famous horse race in the world.
The following year, Honeysuckle won the Champion Hurdle again and A Plus Tard won the Gold Cup, reversing places with Minella Indo, and a 1-2 in National Hunt racing’s blue riband event again for the trainer, and back-to-back wins in both the Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup.
You don’t rest on your laurels though. You kick on, the next race, the next horse, the next win. That’s why he is a perennial at the top table of National Hunt racing.
This season has started brightly for Henry de Bromhead. He has had more National Hunt winners in Ireland in October than he has had in any other single month since he started training. He is operating at a strike rate of over 34% since the start of October, and he has already bagged his first Grade 1 prize of the season with the remarkable Envoi Allen, who won the Champion Chase at Down Royal again.
