After Quevega won her fourth Mares’ Hurdle in 2012, owners Ger O’Brien and Sean Deane (the Hammer and Trowel Syndicate) were having a drink with Willie Mullins in the owners and trainers bar after racing.

“This time 12 months, we could be coming back to equal Golden Miller’s record,” O’Brien said to the trainer.

Mullins replied: “I was more thinking along the lines that in 24 months, we’d be coming back to break that record.”

When it comes to running plans at the Festival and the champion trainer, it’s always been a cloudy scene with punters trying to second guess the great man but one thing that stayed constant was Quevega and the Mares’ Hurdle.

Mullins was on the money. For six years in a row Quevega turned up to the race as favourite and delivered the goods each time. Good or soft ground, fast or slow pace, big or small fields, it didn’t matter to Queen Quevega and she rightly goes down as folklore at the Festival, with a bar even named after her on course.

Quevega was handled brilliantly by all at Closutton which is part of the reason she raced on until she was 10. The other part was that O’Brien and Deane were described by Mullins as racing people rather than breeding people but intriguingly, that changed once the mare was retired.

Best hotel

“We had a good mare and we decided to keep her,” O’Brien puts it simply. “When we decided to keep her, we decided she deserved the best hotel available so we contacted the Irish National Stud and asked would they be willing to board her for us and they were.

“We had seven fantastic years from her on the track and took the view that we could get another seven or 10 fantastic years from her producing foals with a view of keeping them and racing them as well.

“So phase two has started, she was the only mare we had except for her daughter Princess Vega who is also in foal to Order Of St George, so then we had two mares.

“The National Stud plays a huge part in the whole process. The care and attention she gets there is fantastic and no stone is left unturned minding these horses. Everything just goes so smoothly.”

It’s quite rare that National Hunt mares go on to replicate their success as broodmares but incredibly, Quevega seems to be doing just that. Her first foal Princess Vega, won on her track debut in a Tramore maiden hurdle and her second was Facile Vega, who remarkably took her owners back to Cheltenham last year and secured them yet another win, their eighth in all, after Quevega’s six and Thousand Stars’ County Hurdle.

“It’s funny, when Quevega was winning there, the Mares’ Hurdle wasn’t a Grade 1,” O’Brien recalls. “Usually they upgrade a new Grade 2 race to Grade 1 level after it has bedded in but didn’t happen until after she finished up and so it turned out we had to send her son over there to get us the Grade 1 win.

“That backstory just completely made it for us. When you still own the mare and you’re involved in the breeding side, it’s just a completely different dynamic. It’s a six-year project really, from the time she went in foal to when Facile Vega gets to Cheltenham, and a lot of things can happen in six years.

“When she went over, the expectation was there every time. There was expectation with him, after he was so impressive in his bumpers at Leopardstown as well. You’d just be filled with nervous energy watching it and obviously you’re thrilled when it works out.

“It was all on when Stuart Machin said they were turning for home but Patrick (Mullins) just arrived there full of running. It was amazing really. It’s what everyone wants, to win at Cheltenham and we’ve just been so lucky with it - to have visited the number one spot eight times, we do understand how lucky we are.”

Nine wins

Before the Dublin Racing Festival, it was odds-on O’Brien and Deane would score a ninth Festival win but the picture changed completely when Facile Vega was beaten for the first time at that meeting.

Willie Mullins was critical of the ride the six-year-old got from Paul Townend, setting a brisk early pace with High Definition but it subsequently transpired that the horse was lame the following day.

“In a way, it’s good that there was an excuse for him, as well as the strong gallop,” O’Brien says. “As long as it isn’t anything serious, like something to do with ligaments or tendons, you live to fight another day.”

It says a huge deal for Facile Vega that he remains favourite for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in spite of what would usually be a season-ending run for many horses.

Mullins, O’Brien and Deane will take it day by day with him but should the horse arrive in Prestbury Park in 100% health, he will surely be a huge force. In a strange way, his stablemate Il Etait Temps winning impressively as Facile Vega faded out of view was a boost to his overall form, considering Facile Vega was a comfortable winner over that horse over the same course and distance at Christmas. At the time, that form was questioned but O’Brien was never in doubt.

“We were always thrilled with his run at Christmas,” he recalls. “It was a big learning curve for him. When won his maiden hurdle in Fairyhouse, he bucked out and made it and there never any horse contending with him.

“In Leopardstown he just lobbed down to the first with Paul (Townend) happy to take a lead, but then Il Etait Temps put the handbrake on and Paul had to veer left to avoid a collision.

“That lit him up and he raced for most of the first half of the race yet, when they turned for home, he was still able to pick up again when required which means there has to be a real engine there.”

Expectation

Part of the reason there is so much expectation of Facile Vega is the noises coming out of Closutton. In the various stable tours merry-go-round at the beginning of the season Willie Mullins said he hadn’t had a horse in a long time that he was looking forward to as much as this one. Perhaps that is a contributing factor to how frustrated the trainer was in the immediate aftermath of the horse’s run at the Dublin Racing Festival.

He won’t be losing faith anyway and neither will O’Brien and Deane, who are already in an enviable position with this horse. Amazingly, things may well continue to get better and better for them as Facile Vega already has four siblings on the ground, and will have a fifth this March when Quevega is expecting her next foal, who is also by Walk In The Park.

There is a full-sister to Facile Vega who O’Brien expects to see on the track this spring while next in line is a four-year-old half-sister (by Camelot), a three-year-old half-sister (by Australia) and full-brother yearling.

They all go through the same process which involves three stints of pre-training with John Berry and then into Closutton, where they turn four and spend the next year preparing to go into training as five-year-olds.

No success is guaranteed in this game but the omens are certainly good for this family, so much so that the option, although likely a longshot, could be there to keep the colt yearling back and stand him as a National Hunt stallion.

“I’ve been around long enough never to rule anything in or out,” O’Brien replies “Will it happen? Who knows. Can it happen? It probably could. Will it? I don’t know. You’d have to see how controllable they are to start with.

“There’s a lot of ifs and ands on that one but it sounds like a novel idea. You never rule anything out or in.”

So successful and lucky have O’Brien and Deane been with this project, you’d nearly think it would be worth rolling the dice.

Millions

For now, it’s all about Cheltenham and Facile Vega. That’s the bread and butter for them which sounds crazy when you compare their success to some other owners who have literally spent millions and have yet to have a winner at the Festival, but that is how routine success has been for them at the Festival.

“We’re looking forward to it and loving every moment of it.”

This article is taken from The Irish Field Cheltenham Magazine 2023. CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY