Cheltenham Festival Trainer Focus: Henry De Bromhead hoping to repeat 2021 heroics

Henry De Bromhead has held a trainer's license for just over 20 years and has steadily grown into one of the leading National Hunt trainers in Ireland. The last five seasons in particular have seen him accelerate his progress up the ranks, with him consistently raising the bar with regard to winners and prize money.

Those performances have seen him emerge from the pack as the closest pursuer of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott and there is no sign of his progress levelling out.

De Bromhead has saddled a total of 15 winners at the Cheltenham Festival.

It all started with Sizing Europe's victory in the Arkle Challenge Trophy in 2010, but it has ramped it up in no uncertain terms in recent years.

History made at 2021 Festival

Indeed, 2021 saw De Bromhead produce one of the greatest individual trainer performances of all time at the meeting.

In what was an unforgettable week, he saddled six winners at the meeting that included the Champion Hurdle, the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Gold Cup. It was the first time that any trainer had ever won those three Championship races in the one year. For good measure, he saddled a 1-2 in the Gold Cup.

It was a week that will live on in legend and certainly seems to set the bar impossibly high for De Bromhead in 2022.

Super mare Honeysuckle leads this year's charge

That said, De Bromhead is set to send all six of his winners from last year and an array of others into battle at the meeting this year. They will be led by the unbeaten Honeysuckle in the Champion Hurdle, but he has plenty of other ammunition and will have high hopes of having another Cheltenham Festival to remember.

Telmesomethinggirl looks to have an excellent chance in the Mares' Hurdle, Bob Olinger is an odds-on favourite for the Turners' Novices' Chase and the Minella Indo and A Plus Tard, the 1-2 in last year's Gold Cup, both look to have strong prospects in the race once again.

Mind, for all the record that Henry De Bromhead has at the Cheltenham Festival and the once-in-a-lifetime week he enjoyed at it last year, the main point of focus on him in recent months has been his stable form and the related question of whether his string will be in top order for the Cheltenham Festival.

Such has been the level of focus on this question, it warrants a deep dive into the evidence to see if we can help answer it.

Hot streat about to come at the right time?

If one was to look at Henry's season in a broad sense, there wouldn't be any cause for concern. His strike rate is running at 15%, a level of performance that has become the norm for him in the last decade or so.

With 88 winners already on the board, he is well on track to smash his own record of 98 domestic winners in a campaign that he set last season.

However, it is when one breaks those winners down into month-by-month segments that the causes for concern start to emerge.

Having enjoyed an electric run of form from May into November, his form seemingly started to stutter in December and January, with his strike rate dropping to 7.5% over jumps during those two months in Ireland and the UK.

While he seemed to bounce back in February having operated at a strike rate of 17%, the concerns about De Bromhead's stable form have been widely discussed and remain persistent.

Mind, win strike rates don't ever tell the full story and are a very blunt instrument on which the judge stable form.

Those that wish to go deeper have multiple options, but the measure I like to use is PRB^2 (percentage of rivals beaten squared). Applying it to this case is revealing when comparing his month-by-month performances to previous seasons.

While there is no question that De Bromhead hit a notable lull in December, his form was well on the way to bouncing back in January and his PRB^2 for February was the best it's been in any one of the last four seasons.

That analysis puts a different spin on his stable form and would encourage anyone looking to support De Bromhead horses at the Cheltenham Festival that his squad may well be building up to another hot streak on the days that matter most.

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