THE Big Breakaway is one of the most talked about horses in training and last week he won his second hurdle race, at Newbury, in the style of a horse going places. He is from a family that features for the second time in a month in this column, but I make no apologies for highlighting it again.

Bred in Conna, Co Cork by William Mangan, The Big Breakaway has been a horse on the rise since his young days. A son of Getaway (Monsun), he was sold as a foal at Tattersalls Ireland for €17,000 to MCC Farms. Nurtured for two and half years, he returned a nice profit when he sold at the 2018 Derby Sale to Monbeg Stables for €55,000.

Donnchadh Doyle sent him to Quakerstown in April of this year where he ran out a hugely impressive winner of a Goffs-sponsored maiden, landing the spoils with 10 lengths to spare. He was snapped up for the Goffs Punchestown Sale less than two weeks later. A new record for the sale was set when Ross Doyle, acting for Colin Tizzard, paid €360,000 (£306,000) for The Big Getaway. Doyle outlasted bloodstock agent Tom Malone for the gelding.

‘Something hotter’

Colin Tizzard trains The Big Breakaway for Eric Jones, Geoff Nicholas and John Romans and he said after his most recent win: “He is a gorgeous young horse. With two penalties we’ll have to step up to something hotter. We could take him to Cheltenham on January 25th to let him have a look at the course; he was bought to be a Cheltenham horse.”

From the time that The Big Getaway, and his year-younger full-sister, were sold as foals, so much has happened in the pedigree. This year The Big Getaway’s three-year-old own-sister sold to Mags O’Toole at the Derby Sale for €185,000, a price you would have thought unthinkable when she was purchased by Pat Kinsella as a foal for just €1,800.

Back in November 2016 their dam Princess Mairead, a daughter of Blueprint (Generous) who had run three times without troubling the judge over hurdles, had produced just a placed hurdler and a placed point-to-pointer. You had to go back to the third dam to find a blacktype winner, and that was in a Grade 3 mares’ novice chase. In the intervening years the pedigree has turned inside out.

That placed point-to-pointer is now Kildisart (Dubai Destination) and his five wins include the Grade 3 Betway Chase at Aintree. The placed hurdler, For Sinead (Presenting), went on to win over hurdles and is now at stud with a couple of produce on the ground. They were followed by The Blind Piper (Robin Des Champs) who, on his second outing, ran out a 10-length winner of a point-to-point in October.

The first foal out of Princess Mairead, a full-sister to The Blind Piper, was never named, and The Big Breakaway is just her fifth offspring, the fourth to race and all four have visited a winners’ enclosure somewhere. Little wonder then that Mags O’Toole parted with a price that was the best paid for a filly at the Derby Sale this year for her sixth progeny. The seventh, and only other produce to date from the now 16-year-old mare, is a two-year-old son of Fame And Glory (Montjeu).

Improving

It is not only under Princess Mairead that the family is improving. Her half-sister is the unraced Peggy Cullen (Presenting) and she is the dam of Rathvinden (Heron Island), a €1,700 foal who became a €100,000 Derby Sale graduate and has won more than £300,000 in a career spanning nine victories. Though he was placed at Grade 1 level over hurdles, his forte has been chasing and his three Grade 3 successes in Ireland are eclipsed by his victory in the Grade 2 National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.

A Grade 1 runner-up over the larger obstacles, Rathvinden was a gallant third behind Tiger Roll and Magic Of Light this year in the Aintree Grand National. He may have one more big race success in him yet.

Princess Mairead and Peggy Cullen are two of the nine foals out of Maries Gale (Strong Gale). She was a bumper and hurdle winner at the age of five, and while eight of those nine offspring made it to a start, not one of them won a race of any kind, on the track or between the flags. Such a record might have scared breeders off producing from her daughters, but now two of them have produced graded chase winners.

Maries Gale was one of four winners from Smithstown Lady (Tarqogan) who raced in France and was placed a few times. Another of that winning quartet was Windswept Lady (Strong Gale), a full-sister to Maries Gale, and she was in the news recently as her Grade 3 winning daughter Aura About You (Supreme Leader) is the dam of the Grade 2 Navan Novice Hurdle scorer Latest Exhibition (Oscar). These successes have ignited another branch of the family.

While they are now distantly related to The Big Breakaway, another wing of this female line has in the last decade given us runners such as Grade 2 Cleeve Hurdle winner Knockara Beau (Leading Counsel), Grade 2 hurdle winners On The Blind Side (Stowaway) and Some Article (Definite Article), and Grade 3 winner Well Set Up (Gold Well).

Fee increase

Getaway stands at Grange Stud and his fee rises for 2020 to €9,000. He is a dual Group 1 winner of the Deutschland-Preis and Grosser Preis Von Baden, both over a mile and a half, while he beat the St Leger winner Sixties Icon by nearly four lengths in the Group 2 Jockey Club Stakes.

Other big race successes included the Group 2 Grand Prix de Deauville by a length from Doctor Dino and the Group 2 Prix Kergorlay. He was beaten less than two lengths in the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe behind Dylan Thomas, Youmzain and Sagara.

The growing list of big race winners for Getaway include Verdana Blue (Grade 1 Christmas Hurdle), dual Grade 2 hurdle winner Getabird, Getaway Katie Mai (Grade 2 Goffs Nickel Coin Mares Bumper at Aintree), Danny Whizzbang (Grade 2 John Francome Novices’ Chase at Newbury), Talkischeap, Jarvey’s Plate and Vegas Blue.