THE final day of the 2025 Cheltenham Festival saw an Irish-bred, Inothewayurthinkin, win the blue riband of National Hunt racing, the Grade 1 Boodles Gold Cup, while the other Grade 1 races on the day produced victories for a British and a French-bred.

The traditional opener on the final day, the Grade 1 JCB Triumph Hurdle, saw Willie Mullins saddle 11 of the 18 runners. While many were more fancied, and many pundits questioned whether a horse that hadn’t even run in a hurdle race should be allowed to compete, it was one of the latter that contributed significantly to another memorable Cheltenham for Mullins.

Owned by Tony Bloom, Poniros became the second Grade 1 winner of the week for his sire, Golden Horn (Cape Cross), as his daughter Golden Ace won the Champion Hurdle.

A winner at two, following his sale as a foal for 20,000gns and as a yearling by Kilminfoyle Stud for €95,000 to Ross Doyle, Poniros was consigned by Amo Racing to the Tattersalls Horses In Training Sale through Baroda Stud, where Harold Kirk and Willie Mullins purchased him for 200,000gns. Winning £65,000 first time out was not a bad start to the repayment plan.

Poniros is one of two winners from Rue Renam (Lope De Vega), and her dam Buffalo Berry (Sri Pekan) won a listed race in Ireland, placed in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes, and went on to win a Grade 3 in the USA.

Knockhouse Stud

Tirwanako (Sin Kiang) was purchased by Sean Kinsella’s Knockhouse Stud in Co Kilkenny in time for the 2020 breeding season. His first Irish crop are four-year-olds. Some of his French-bred stock caught the headlines in the sales ring, notably when Ed Bailey went to £280,000 for Adrimel at the Goffs UK Aintree Sale, and Gavin Cromwell gave £130,000 for Gabynako at the Tattersalls Cheltenham November Sale.

Adrimel won a Grade 2 novices’ hurdle, while Gabynako was runner-up in a pair of Grade 1 novice chases. Now the sire has the ultimate boost as his son Jasmin De Vaux, bred by Didier Desrayaud, has added the Grade 1 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle to his success last year in the Grade 1 Weatherbys Champion Bumper. Tirwanako’s pedigree is free of Sadler’s Wells blood.

Jasmin De Vaux, a €28,000 Goffs Land Rover Sale purchase by the Crawford Brothers, is a winning graduate of the point-to-point sphere. He is by far the best runner produced in four generations on his dam side, and one of three winning offspring of the Grand Seigneur (Mansonnien) mare Que Du Charmil.

THREE mares, all bred in France, were among the seven winners on the final day of this year’s Festival, Dinoblue (Doctor Dino) in the Grade 2 mares’ chase, Kargese in the Grade 3 County Hurdle, and Wodhooh giving Gordon Elliott his only winner of the week in the concluding conditional riders’ hurdle.

Dinoblue has no inbreeding in her pedigree going back five generations, and will make a fine broodmare in time. She is a granddaughter of the listed hurdle-placed mare Blue D’Avril (Pistolet Bleu). A winner over hurdles, Dinoblue has truly blossomed since she went chasing, and her Grade 1 win in the Paddy’s Rewards Club Chase at Leopardstown is among her seven successes over fences.

Bred by ML Bloodstock, Dinoblue is one of a pair of winners out of Blue Aster, the other being the Grade 1 Weatherbys Champion Bumper runner-up Blue Sari (Saddex). That day the gelding, also representing McManus and Mullins, was beaten less than a length by Envoi Allen. However, he failed to build on that early promise, winning once each over hurdles and fences subsequently.

Royal Auclair

A close relation to Dinoblue was also victorious at Cheltenham. Royal Auclair (Garde Royale), a half-brother to Dinoblue’s grandam, won the Grade 2 Cathcart Chase. For good measure, the ill-fated Brindisi Breeze (King’s Theatre) appears in the fourth remove of the pedigree, and he won the Grade 1 Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle there 13 years ago.

A dual Grade 1 juvenile hurdle winner, and runner-up at Cheltenham in the Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle, Kargese was deserving of a Festival win, and duly obliged in the Grade 3 County Hurdle. The hugely consistent mare is a great advertisement for Glenview Stud’s Jeu St Eloi (Saint Des Saints), now sire of nine blacktype winners over jumps.

Kargese put herself firmly in the Triumph Hurdle picture last year with her success in the Grade 1 McCann FitzGerald Spring Juvenile Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival. And she rounded out her season with a Grade 1 victory in the Champion Juvenile Hurdle at Punchestown. She races for Kenny Alexander who has the Midas touch when it comes to racing fillies.

Jeu St Eloi

Bred by Thierry Cypres, Kargese won two of her three starts in France, culminating with victory in the Grade 3 Prix Sagan Hurdle at Auteuil. Her first Grade 1 win was a breakthrough win at the highest level for Jeu St Eloi, responsible also for the Grade 2 Ascot Hurdle winner Blueking D’Oroux, and a Grade 2 chase winner in Italy. Kargese is one of four winners out of Rive Gauche, a winning daughter of Shaanmer (Darshaan).

Rive Gauche’s half-sister Fortanea (Video Rock) won seven times in France, three of them over jumps, and bred the Grade 1 Sefton Novices’ Hurdle winner Saint Are (Network). Better still, Fortanea is grandam of the brilliant Vroum Vroum Mag (Voix Du Nord), winner of three Grade 1 hurdle races when trained by Willie Mullins.

While the final race on the card at Cheltenham does not carry blacktype, the winner Wodhooh has already been successful twice in blacktype fillies’ hurdle races, at Doncaster and Newbury. Her victory on Friday last took her tally to seven over hurdles, and the five-year-old will surely not be finished yet. Bred by Al Shaqab Racing, she is a daughter of the leading French sire Le Havre (Noverre), and out of the unraced Dhan (Dubawi) who cost 425,000gns as a yearling.

Wodhooh is the third foal and second winner for Dhan. Incredibly, the mare’s first foal, Sotchi (Olympic Glory), could be the worst horse in training, given that the seven-year-old has raced 48 times in France and never been placed. Thankfully that lack of ability has not been inherited by Wodhooh. Dhan is a half-sister to Group 2 winner and Group 1 runner-up Emerald Commander (Pivotal), while their dam Brigitta (Sadler’s Wells) is a full-sister to Group 1 Racing Post Trophy winner Commander Collins, and a half-sister to champion US sprinter Lit De Justice (El Gran Senor).

Curling’s picture of happiness

TRAINER Sam Curling and jockey Rob James both recorded a second Cheltenham Festival success when Wonderwall won ‘the amateur’s Gold Cup’, the St James’s Place Festival Hunters’ Chase. Curling also saddled Angels Dawn, whom he trained to win the Kim Muir two years earlier, in the race. That mare is set to be retired now and covered this spring.

Wonderwall (Yeats) was bred by Barbara Kirby, and what a pity that the Cheltenham racecard does not carry the name of the breeder for this race only. That is something that should be rectified.

Ben Case bought Wonderwall as a foal at Tattersalls Ireland for €18,000, sold him for €105,000 at the Goffs Land Rover Sale, while Sam Curling acquired him as an eight-year-old last summer for £33,000 at Doncaster.

Since he moved to Tipperary, Wonderwall has won two point-to-points, his only starts for Curling before he ran at Cheltenham. He won a bumper and hurdle race for Peter Bowen and was placed in a listed bumper at Ascot and a Grade 2 novice chase in Newbury. There is no shortage of Group and Grade 1 flat winners in the family, including Wonderwall’s fourth dam Miss Toshiba (Sir Ivor), but this branch is now National Hunt focused.

Wonderwall’s grandam Disallowed (Distinctly North) was a listed hurdle winner at Chepstow, and her best progeny was himself a Cheltenham Festival winner. Riverside Theatre (King’s Theatre) won the Grade 1 Ryanair Chase, was twice victorious in the Grade 1 Ascot Chase, and was second in the Grade 1 King George VI Chase. Barbara Kirby bought his half-sister Rock Me Gently (Sulamani), the dam of Wonderwall, as a seven-year-old for €30,000, her first mare.

Incredibly, Barbara’s husband Edmond Coleman bred a winner of the same race at Cheltenham in 2020, Lord Windermere’s half-brother It Came To Pass. Rock Me Gently has a number of young stock, but is now the dam of three racecourse winners, and last year’s point-to-point winner Thistimetomorrow (Walk In The Park).