De Bromhead ‘bit stressed’ with moderate run of form, but hoping to come good for Cheltenham

Henry de Bromhead believes an upturn in stable form is just around the corner, as he begins to finalise running plans for next month’s Cheltenham Festival.

The County Waterford trainer enjoyed a fine start to the Irish National Hunt season proper, with 10 winners in October followed by 16 from 52 runners in November, equating to a 31 per cent strike-rate for the month.

However, nine winners across the busy December calendar was a step backwards and the turn of the year failed to stop the slide, with De Bromhead saddling only two winners in January.

Special Cadeau’s surprise victory at Thurles on Thursday was a boost for the team, though, and De Bromhead – whose 23 Festival winners includes the Champion Hurdle twice, Champion Chase four times and the Gold Cup twice – will be keeping his fingers crossed the tide is beginning to turn.

Asked how he was feeling with the start of the Festival now little over four weeks away, he said: “A bit stressed, the horses have obviously been a little bit out of form and the last month has been frustrating, but you do get runs like that and times like that, hopefully not too frequently, but we’ve had them before.

“Obviously you’d prefer to see them running a bit better, but we feel we’re on top of it. You stick to your processes and how you do it, obviously tweak little things and hopefully now they’ll turn the corner in the next couple of weeks.

“We’re doing all our testing and there’s nothing very obvious, so I think it’s just a matter of getting through it and I feel we are. You can see the horses starting to come back into form at home.”

De Bromhead believes that his lack of recent success can in part be put down to the fact that several of his leading Festival hopes have not been seen in action since Christmas.

That number includes the exciting Supreme Novices’ Hurdle candidate Workahead, high-class mare July Flower – who is entered in both the Mares’ Hurdle and the Stayers’ Hurdle – and stable veterans Envoi Allen and Jungle Boogie, who look set to do battle in the Ryanair Chase.

“Quite a lot of our horses we would put away after Christmas, so there’s a good few that are just back cantering now as we want them fresh and well in themselves,” he said.

“When you’re pulling some of your top horses out of competition for this month that’s going to make it harder as we very much set our sights on Cheltenham from Christmas, but there have still been some very disappointing runs.

“A few have run well and a few weren’t good enough, I don’t think it can all be stable form. Up until Christmas we’d had a great run.”