HENRY DE BROMHEAD


H


enry de Bromhead and the Cheltenham Festival go way back to Fissure Seal in 1993. Fissure Seal was trained by Henry’s father


Harry. Henry was working for Derrinstown Stud at the time, and had to take time off work just to go to Cheltenham. He went there as a fan, not as a trainer. Even so, he got some kick out of it. Irish trainers were not prolific at the Cheltenham


Festival in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Different landscape now obviously, but in the six Cheltenham Festivals that went before 1993, there were a total of eight Irish-trained Cheltenham Festival winners. That’s an average of 1.33 per year, and it included the whitewash of 1989, when even Galmoy just came up short in his bid for a hat-trick of Festival victories. But 1993 was different. Fissure Seal was one


of six Irish winners during the week, Harry de Bromhead’s horse driven home in the last race on the first day, the American Express Gold Card Handicap Hurdle Final. “I can’t claim any credit at all for Fissure Seal,” says de Bromhead. “It was brilliant though, for dad and for his whole team.” It was Henry and his team who prepared Sizing


Europe for the Champion Hurdle in 2008. Allan Potts’ horse had won the Greatwood Hurdle the previous November, and he had danced in in the Irish Champion Hurdle in January, leaving top class hurdlers Hardy Eustace and Al Eile in his wake. They sent him off as 2/1 favourite for the 2008 Champion Hurdle, and he travelled like a 2/1 favourite down the hill. He was the most likely


RACING TV CLUBMAGAZINE 9


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