Brookhouse has every confidence in Brechin Castle

Ashley Iveson
January 19, 2024 3:19 pm

Newbury target before assault on Champion Bumper.

Ben Brookhouse has not lost faith in his star bumper performer Brechin Castle, who is set to warm up for a trip to the Cheltenham Festival with an outing at Newbury next month.

A GBP 165,000 recruit from the Irish point-to-point field, the six-year-old bolted up on his debut under rules at Sedgefield before successfully transitioning to Listed class at Cheltenham in November.

He met with defeat for the first time when filling the runner-up spot in another Listed event at Ascot before Christmas, but was far from disgraced in finishing second to Dan Skelton’s exciting mare Let It Rain, to whom he was conceding 11lb.

“I think it was one of his best runs, to be fair,” Brookhouse said of his Ascot performance.

“We were giving 11lb to the winner and when she won it wasn’t a massive surprise to me because I did think she was the one to be worried about, because of the weight we were giving her.

“We gave 4lb to everything else and gave them a good beating, it was just giving 11lb to the Skelton horse that proved too much for us.”

Next on Brechin Castle’s is the Betfair Bumper, the finale on Newbury’s Betfair Hurdle card on February 10, and Brookhouse would relish a rematch with Let It Rain should it happen.

He added: “He had a small break over Christmas and New Year out in the paddock with his rugs on and the plan would be to go to Newbury in February in preparation for Cheltenham.

“He seems in great order for his break. He put on weight and didn’t lose any muscle or anything. He just did exactly what we wanted him to, which was refill the petrol tank.

“If we bump into the Skelton horse at Newbury she is not a four-year-old anymore, so she won’t get the four-year-old allowance, and she’ll have a 4lb penalty for winning a Listed race, so all of a sudden that 11lb we gave her is nigh on non-existent.”

Brechin Castle is a 33-1 shot for the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at Cheltenham in March, and while he will undoubtedly have to contend with a formidable Irish contingent come the Festival, a return to winning ways at Newbury may well make him Britain’s leading candidate for the Grade One contest.

Brookhouse said: “He’s got course form at Cheltenham, he’s had plenty of racing and plenty of experience. You could argue he’s exposed, but all he can do is beat what’s put in front of him and the only chink in his armour was he was beaten trying to give 11lb to a nice filly.

“Weight stops train, let alone horses, so we can’t blame him for that. He was giving 4lb to several other horses who at the time were considered the best young bumper horses in the country and I don’t want to sound confident or cocky, but he was pulling away from the third at the finish and he wiped the floor with them.”