sport news 'I will never get sick of talking about Honeysuckle's win. One of the great ... trends now
Henry de Bromhead pulls up a chair and prepares to discuss his Cheltenham team but he knows where this conversation must start.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, chuckling. ‘I never, ever tire of talking about her.’
‘Her’, of course, is Honeysuckle. The first day of the Festival belonged to this beautiful mare with the big heart in the last four years but when the action begins on Tuesday, she will be 350 miles away at her owner Kenny Alexander’s stud in Ayrshire, preparing to deliver her first foal.
‘Kenny keeps sending pictures over of her, she looks amazing,’ De Bromhead says. ‘We see her again soon, for sure. She went out in one piece and the way she went out was just incredible. We always knew it was going to happen and we were prepared for it. But life moves on.’
It does — this 51-year-old, who trains in Knockeen, Waterford, knows it only too well — but sometimes you have to look at the past, specifically the events of March 14, 2023 when Honeysuckle provided one of those moments written in the stars.
Honeysuckle, ridden by Rachel Blackmore, claimed an emotional victory at Cheltenham
Seven months earlier, De Bromhead had lost his 13-year-old son, Jack, in a pony race. Through the unimaginable grief, he, his wife Heather, Jack’s twin sister Mia and youngest daughter Georgia were enveloped with unrelenting support from the racing community.
The news resonated far and wide. De Bromhead is a fantastic trainer, a man with a CV that includes two Gold Cups among 25 Cheltenham successes and a Grand National, too, so when he brought Honeysuckle over for her racecourse swansong, it was always going to be poignant.
Honeysuckle had been the darling of Cheltenham, having won the Mares’ Hurdle and two Champion Hurdles, but many wondered whether this was going to be one race
