JOHN BOWE watched the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham in a betting shop in Skerries, unable to ignore the sense of inevitability that had flooded over him all week. Even when Fayonagh fluffed her lines at the start and gave ground to every single horse in the race, he knew deep down what was going to unfold.

It soon became evident that not even the ground would present a problem. That went against her pedigree and what we saw when she emerged a 20-length winner of a listed contest at Fairyhouse on soft-to-heavy.

So she slalomed up the straight under an inspired drive by Jamie Codd to frank herself a versatile Grade 1 winner. She has repeated the trick since at Punchestown, this time back to burning off the opposition from the van and never seeing another horse.

Ted Walsh excitedly mentioned her in the same sentence as Dawn Run. But with Bowe as the breeder, it was another exceptional front-running mare that sprung to mind: Solerina, the half-sister to Fayonagh’s dam Fair Ina.

Walking back up the road after watching the Cheltenham miracle, having sold a broken and ridden Fayonagh to Richie Rath at just about cost, lost her younger sister to colic a few weeks later after changing his mind at the last second as regards which he would keep, and sold Fair Ina in foal very cheaply, the nearly always good-humoured Bowe felt a little sick and a little angry with himself.

The call was a commercially sensible one after a decade of failure and bad luck, a case of cutting his losses, but hindsight is flawless and he is kicking himself that he wasn’t more patient.

Fayonagh had shown little but the history of late developers in that line and in pure National Hunt pedigrees in general provided the evidence. Both of the family superstars were examples of that.

Bowe also acknowledges that he forgot the circumstances that got them into Fayonagh’s breed in the first place. His brother Michael bought Deep Pace in foal for £400 at Fairyhouse in 1994. First lot in the morning, she was in her mid-teens and hadn’t produced anything of note but Michael knew the family well, having had a mare named Patsy Brown from the pedigree years previously. As a direct descendant of Sweet Wall, who won 13 out of 17 races in the 1930s, Deep Peace was worth the investment, he felt.

SOLERINA

The foal was a colt, Florida Coast, who won three times for the Bowes and was placed on a further 14 occasions. Then, Michael sent Deep Peace to Toulon and the result was a filly they named after her fifth dam, the 1936 winner of the Stewards’ Cup – Solerina.

“I was stopped in my tracks watching a re-run of the Cheltenham Bumper the following day as someone – I think it was Luke Harvey – said that the way Fayonagh quickened in the last furlong was like something from the Stewards’ Cup,” says Bowe. “It was remarkable given the Solerina connection.

“When Michael bought Deep Peace it was because someone else had given up on the breed at the exact wrong time. Funnily enough, I did the same thing with Fair Ina. We forgot to stay with the pedigree. National Hunt breeds can take a long time to come back and you really have to just see it through right to the end I think. I had sworn that I would never lose faith but breeding has a way of just wearing you down. It goes to show that history has a habit of repeating itself.

“Another huge mistake I made was to try and make four-year-olds of them partly driven by trends in racing and over-eagerness to get something of note on the page at an early stage. Millerina and Kallerina broke down as four-year-olds just as they were starting off.

“Nothing is guaranteed. I couldn’t keep all the fillies, they were tripping over each other and I thought even if Fayonagh turned out to be good at least I would have her younger sister. But that’s gone now. I had never intended getting rid of the line completely. I grew really fond of her younger sister, everyone that came in said how much nicer she was and I switched. I suppose I over-thought it.”

LIMESTONE LAD

Deep Peace was just one example of how the Gathabawn clan have come out on the ride side of the swing and the roundabout. They only raced Limestone Lad and Solerina because they couldn’t sell them. Between them, the pair accumulated more than €1.4m in prize-money, registered 57 victories and were only out of the first three 23 times from 105 runs.

Both headstrong individuals, they were always housed alongside one another. Solerina appeared to have a calming effect on Limestone Lad, who generally didn’t suffer fools – or much else invading his space. It is fitting that they are on top of the Grade 1 Hatton’s Grace Hurdle roll of honour with three wins each.

“Limestone was knocked for having an abnormal heartbeat… but they didn’t say whether it was abnormal in the right or wrong way! We often joke that you’d wonder how good he’d have been if he’d had a good heart.

“When he won the Woodies Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown (December 28th, 1999), I thought he was at his peak that day. A month before that he had beaten Istabraq to win his first Hatton’s Grace. He then beat Le Coudray by 20 lengths before winning the Woodies by 30. I’d find it hard to think what horse would have beaten him during that purple patch. He was maybe never as good before or after, as he was in that period.

“My favourite memory of Solerina was probably her third Hatton’s Grace, when she got up to beat Golden Cross. Maeve Davison, mother of Chris De Burgh and grandmother of Rosanna Davison, used to write to us and ring Michael to wish us well whenever she was running. Maeve bred Bargy Music, from whom Solerina is descended - so we like to say she bred two Miss Worlds!”

Limestone Lad celebrated his 25th birthday last month and remains the boss at home. Solerina will be 20 next week and is currently separated from her lifelong partner, as she is due to be covered by Jet Away. Sweet Kiln, a very gutsy mare owned by Bowe’s mother Phyllis that was beaten only a short-head in a Hatton’s Grace, will also be mated with the Arctic Stud stallion.

FICKLE FILLIES

One wonders if watching Fayonagh win her Naas bumper in the stands under JJ Slevin was more of a killer than the heights she reached after. Wouldn’t Bowe have sold her by then anyway?

“I have thought a lot about that. She definitely wouldn’t have been running in the Cheltenham Bumper had we had her. Would she have been sold after she won her first bumper? I don’t know. The feeling is we would have kept her because she was a filly and at this stage the rest of them were gone.

“She paid 70/1 on the Tote at Naas that day. I don’t think anyone expected her to win then, not to mention how good she turned out afterwards. Richie was probably delighted with what he got and would have thought they’d sold her on a high.

“With fillies, when they start improving, you don’t know where they’ll go and particularly that breed. Solerina herself wasn’t a bumper mare. It took her until she was six before she really showed her ability. Tom Foley had her for a few months and didn’t think she was going to amount to much and that was after a few months of training. It was only when she was second in a bumper at Naas that she showed any kind of potential. All of the good ones, they can be lazy and when they get to the racecourse is where it counts.”

It is a stark illustration of how difficult this game is. For the detractors of the industry, who think it is all about rich men splurging cash on playthings, this is the type of case study they should be shown, the reality of what is such an inexact science.

It also tells us that there is something wrong in a system where a breeder does not benefit in a direct financial way from racetrack success. Bowe believes that the industry would be better for such an incentive.

“I often wonder, and other people have said it as well, why there isn’t more of a buy-in for breeders. I like the French system where I think the breeder gets a percentage of the prize-money anytime a horse wins. It’s a long-term view and means everything isn’t centred around the sales ring. It would maybe encourage breeders to take more of a risk and produce what they think will be the best racehorse rather than what will sell as a foal, to breed the old-fashioned way rather than breeding commercially. Now, they’re trying to breed a racehorse rather than a sales horse.”

FAMILY TRADITION

The Bowe family have always bred horses. John’s grandfather did it, and his father James, who passed away in 2009, carried it on.

James bred 1981 Champion Chase victor Drumgora and sold him as a yearling. That pedigree appeared dormant until producing Limestone Lad. Patience, the virtue once more.

“The first mare that I owned was Gales Hill, who is named after the land where our mares in foal go. It is protected land full of wild flowers and herbs and is a sort of sanctuary spa for them. They do really well there and come off it in great order. She showed nothing on the track and I sold her before she started breeding. She ended up producing Ballybolley, who won a Grade 2 bumper in Aintree and won the most recent of his nine races last month.

“Solerina went to Definite Article, Royal Anthem, High Chaparral, Milan twice, Yeats twice and Doyen. It took her time to settle down as a broodmare and maybe when they try as hard as she did they leave some of it on the racecourse. Her foals got better at the end but I suppose it’s so important, commercially at least, that the first few set the scene alight in the pedigree and she was unlucky in that regard. Thinking back now it was always going to be a near impossible task for her to be viewed as a successful broodmare as her first few runners were judged on her standards.

“The first one broke down, the second foal died, the High Chaparral filly only made small money in Goffs with two clean certs, the next Milan filly who I really liked, Millerina, broke down and she broke my heart as well. I wondered what I was doing.

“At the same time I was breeding from Solerina’s half-sister Fair Ina, who had also broken down after winning her bumper. She had three fillies by Kalanisi – the first one, Kallerina broke down, the third one died of colic and the second one I sold was a four-year-old that turned out to be Fayonagh.

“In the same period, towards the end of 2015 and completely disheartened, I sold Fair Ina in foal to Fame And Glory, and Kallerina in foal to Dylan Thomas, for very small money, after bringing both to the sales in Tattersalls only to receive no bid or interest. There is nothing like a day at the sales with no interest to demoralise you. I finally started to believe that the market must be correct and I was wrong. I actually had some people coming up to me to tell me that the breed was dead. So I made what I thought was the sensible decision at that time based on what the market was telling me.”

He fears that a reduction in the diversity of owners and trainers in racing in recent years isn’t healthy, viewing concentration in a few hands as a risk to the industry, while also detracting from what he sees as the heart of National Hunt racing, with the owner/breeder increasingly rare.

MARES PROGRAMME

Against that, he believes the establishment of a very strong mares programme is a credit to the industry and hopes that the significant prize-money that is now on offer will make filly foals more attractive in the ring.

He remains fiercely passionate about breeding and won’t let the what-might-have-beens surrounding Fayonagh deter him. Indeed her progress has reminded him of the possibilities.

“Jaime Sommers, who is named after the Bionic Woman, is a very important filly. She was my first winner as a breeder after 10 years trying, so I certainly didn’t expect to breed a Grade 1 winner at Cheltenham so soon after! She’s the only filly left out of Solerina.

“Solerina always had a mind of her own and had to do her own thing and is still very much like that – everything has to be on her terms.

“She resented being held up and loved it soft whereas Jaime Sommers has to be covered up and needs good ground – another anomaly in breeding I suppose.

“The thing about Jaime Sommers is she’s only five. Fayonagh is six and at the bumper stage. Jaime Sommers has run 15 times but, as I won’t ever forget again, the breed tends to improve with age. She is entered at Wexford (today) where the ground should be to her liking. She’s an important future broodmare hopefully if she stays sound and everything goes okay for her. She is a very precious filly.

“Akatara had a filly by Dylan Thomas this year and a colt by Dylan Thomas last year and she’s got a lovely pedigree. We’re fierce fond of her. She won three races and ran 50 times.

“She is actually the first non-homebred we brought in since Deep Peace all those years ago. She only cost a grand. It puts into perspective how easy it would be just to go to the sales and not breed … but then where’s the fun in that? When they are homebred, they are like family.

Sweet Kiln has a Scorpion two-year-old filly and a yearling by Leading Light, as well as Aunt Alice, who has won over hurdles and Rock Road, who has been placed and is still open to improvement. Lucy Stone is due to foal to Jet Away soon and has thrown colts by Vinnie Roe and Dylan Thomas. The other pedigree is Michael’s High Nellie, a half-sister to nine-time winner Coolcashin out of Daisy A Day.

“She is shaping up to be the most experienced maiden hurdler ever and it will be probably as good a day as any if we can get her to win a race,” says Bowe with a smile.

Among the unraced stock, he has a four-year-old Doyen gelding out of Solerina that is broken and a two-year-old half-brother of Fayonagh’s by Dubai Destination and will keep both.

“We’ve kind of gone from too many horses to too few horses. Things change very quickly. You go from one extreme to another. So we’ll hang on to them. I would love to see Michael with a real good one again. It’s more than having a good horse though. It’s about sharing it as a family in this short life and being having the breeders, owners and trainer all within the family is increasingly rare these days.

“But we are breeders first, always have been and always will be. There is nothing like breeding to keep you grounded. You might have to go through 20 ones who will break your heart before a good one and just when you give up on a National Hunt pedigree after years of trying to build it, that good one comes along.

“So on to the next 20!”