HENRY de Bromhead is renowned for the top-class National Hunt winners he produces with great regularity. A few years ago he won a listed flat race with Gorane, but this past weekend he broke new ground when he trained his first group winner on the flat.

On just her second outing, having been runner-up on her debut, Minaun claimed the honours in the Group 3 EBF Marble Hill Stakes in Cork. The €8,000 yearling buy at Goffs has won more than four times her purchase price and finally given her dam, the stakes-placed Bee Eater (Green Desert), a stakes winner. Minaun was bred by Sir Edmund Loder, owner of the famed Eyrefield Lodge Stud which has just come on the market after more than 120 years in Loder ownership.

Sir Edmund bred and raced Bee Eater, a four-time winner who was trained by Sir Mark Prescott, and the same trainer had also handled the career of Bee Eater’s dam Littlefeather (Indian Ridge), another Loder owned and bred four-time winner who travelled to the Curragh, a stone’s throw from the place of her birth, to run third in the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes. Littlefeather, in turn, is a daughter of the outstanding Marwell (Habitat).

One of the very best runners in the long history of Eyrefield Lodge, Marwell was the best of her generation at two and three and her four Group 1 victories comprised the Cheveley Park Stakes, July Cup, King’s Stand Stakes and the Prix de l’Abbaye. She was a contemporary of Shergar’s during her time with Sir Michael Stoute.

Marwell’s legacy was not just on the racecourse but at stud her eight winners included her brilliant daughter Marling (Lomond) and her Group 1 winning son Caerwent (Caerleon). Marling won four Group 1 races, emulating her dam at two when winning the Cheveley Park Stakes. The next year she won the Irish 1000 Guineas, the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Sussex Stakes, against the boys, at Goodwood.

Mother Earth

Third to Dandalla in the Group 3 Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot, Mother Earth franked that form when winning the Group 3 EBF Naas Juvenile Sprint Stakes to open her wining account. In contrast to Minaun, she was a €150,000 yearling buy by M.V. Magnier at the Orby Sale, bred by Grenane House Stud. Like Minaun, she too is out of a Green Desert (Danzig) mare, in this case the Jim Bolger-trained stakes winner Many Colours.

Having failed to produce anything of note by sires such as Dubawi and Street Cry, Many Colours was sold in 2016 for €50,000 and the foal she was carrying, Night Colours (Night of Thunder) was a Group 2 winner in Italy last year at two. Now she has produced a second successive group-winning juvenile. This is the precocious family of Dandy Man (Mozart) and his Queen Mary Stakes-winning half-sister Anthem Alexander (Starspangledbanner).