EQUESTRIAN Honeysuckle has stayed in Ireland, trained by Henry de Bromhead – and she’s never been beaten. She’s won 11 races under rules, including the Mare’s Hurdle at Cheltenham last year.
“It was the way she did it!” said Doug after the Champion Hurdle race at Cheltenham two weeks ago “The way she jumped and pulled clear at the second last and then just kept on going, that’s quite a way to win a Champion Hurdle.
“I always remember people saying of Desert Orchid, ‘he’s a marvellous horse, but he hasn’t won a Gold Cup’. But as soon as he ticked that box, it cemented him up there at the top. “What else can you say about the mare? She’s never been beaten. 11 races on the trot, six Grade 1s on the trot and seven in total. She is just fantastic. I was clearly having a good day when I planned that mating!”
At first glance, one might think Glanvilles Wootton (“population not-a-lot” Doug
Honeysuckle as a 3year old at home on the Stud with youngstock manager, Vicki. Image ©Glanvilles Stud
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“What it’s like to see Honeysuckle cross the line at Cheltenham!“ Doug, Freddie and Lucy Procter at Cheltenham in 2020 - this year they had to be content to watch Honeysuckle on the television. image: Andrew Matthews/PA Archive/PA Images
quipped) is an unlikely Doug & Lucy Procter have produced two Grade 1 winners: spot for a Champion (“the horseracing Hurdle winner. equivalent of a And yet there appears to be football team winning something in the grass that the European racehorses like: where the Championship.” Blackmore Vale meets the chalk downs seems to be perfect land explained Doug) for rearing Thoroughbreds.
Glanvilles Stud was originally an organic dairy farm, and the land with its beautiful mature hedges and trees has created 60 acres of safe paddocks.
Sam Spinner won the Long Walk at Ascot in 2017, and of course now Honeysuckle. Believe it or not, the 1959 Grand National winner Oxo was also bred in the tiny village. And just over the hill, Rooster Booster, who won the Champion Hurdle in 2003, was bred in the Piddle Valley. Another random chance connects the Honeysuckle story to her Dorset roots – Henry De Bromhead came to visit his aunt in Sherborne, and whilst there he visited Robert Alner (himself a Dorset dairy farmer who turned his hobby of point-to-pointing into a successful training career) because his aunt owned a horse being trained at Lockets Farm in Droop, nr Hazelbury Bryan. He came for a couple of weeks, stayed for the whole season and has been training horses himself ever since. Always free - subscribe here
