I KEEP looking back at the weekend’s Grade 1 Baroneracing.com Drinmore Novice Chase and I still cannot see Beacon Edge winning as they turn for home. However, win it he did and elevated himself and his family’s close pedigree to Grade 1 class again.

Earlier this year the seven-year-old gained the biggest win of his career before Sunday when, again at a Co Meath track, he landed the Grade 2 Boyne Hurdle at Navan, and last weekend’s win was his sixth victory to date.

Bred by Harry Browne, Beacon Edge is a son of Doyen (Sadler’s Wells), rated the best older horse in Europe at four when he won the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes, both at Ascot. A Group 1 classic sire on the flat, Doyen stood his first three seasons at Dalham Hall Stud, three seasons in Germany, and had his first year at Michael Hickey’s Sunnyhill Stud, Kilcullen in 2012. Doyen is also sire of Battleoverdoyen, Andy Dufresne, Valdez, the current doyenne of American hump racing The Mean Queen, and many more high-class performers.

Beacon Edge was sold as a store at the 2017 Goffs Land Rover Sale to the late Gerry Griffin, acting for Nicky Richards. A bumper winner on his debut at Ayr as a four-year-old, he was resold for £88,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Cheltenham November Sale and moved to join Noel Meade. The following April he ran third in the Grade 1 Champion INH Bumper at Punchestown.

Now he is a Grade 1 winner over fences, a Grade 2 and Grade 3 winner over hurdles, is Grade 1-placed in a bumper and over hurdles, and, apart from two fourth-place finishes (behind Envoi Allen in a Leopardstown bumper and to Flooring Porter at Cheltenham) and one fall, has not been out of the first three in 15 career starts.

His dam was purchased by the Browne family for just €1,700 as a four-year-old. She is Laurel Gift, an unraced daughter of leading sire Presenting (Mtoto). In addition to Beacon Edge she is the dam of three-time hurdle winner Fridaynightlights (Beneficial) and the bumper winner Mountain Leopard (Shantou).

Not surprisingly Laurel Gift has a two-year-old filly and a yearling colt, both by Doyen, while her 2021 foal is a filly by Poet’s Word (Poet’s Voice).

A couple of years after her purchase by the Browne family, Laurel Gift’s full-brother Jessies Dream emerged and he went on to also win the 2010 Grade 1 Drinmore Chase and to be beaten a neck by Bostons Angel in the Grade 1 RSA Chase at Cheltenham.

Beacon Edge’s third dam Decent Slave (Decent Fellow) was, like the first four dams in the family, unraced. She bred three winners, including the listed bumper runner-up Spartacus Bay (Simply Great), while her daughter Gift Of Freedom (Presenting) was a successful broodmare, producing Roaring Bull (Milan), the Grade 2 Paddy Power Chase winner.

In the pedigree’s fourth remove you will find one of the most popular runners in Ireland during the 1980s. Slave De (Arctic Slave) is dam of the Grade 1 Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Buck House (Royal Buck), and earlier in his career he was also winner at the Festival when he took the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. He actually finished third in the Drinmore Chase!