David Ord on the significant new addition for Warren Greatrex

By David Ord

Horse Racing

Sun February 11, 2024 · 10M ago

David Ord on why Mighty Bandit's new home made a welcome - and significant change.

There were fireworks aplenty at the Andy and Gemma Brown dispersal sale on Monday.

Most of the attention afterwards focused on the duel between Gordon Elliott and Anthony Bromley to secure Caldwell Potter, the Grade One-winning novice hurdler who was one of the few that his former trainer was desperate to keep to slip the net.

Mind you, forcing a world record winning bid of 740,000 guineas for a National Hunt horse is hardly giving up easily as Bromley came out on top on behalf of a partnership that includes John Hales and Sir Alex Ferguson. The horse is bound for Paul Nicholls.

Also in England now is Mighty Bandit, secured by Tessa Greatrex of Highflyer Bloodstock for Jim and Claire Bryce and now trained at their historic Rhonehurst Stables in Lambourn by the bloodstock agent’s husband, Warren.

Clearly such a high-profile purchase is a huge boost for the handler and his team, who have endured some horrible times in recent years, and it’s a shot in the arm for the jumping game too.

There were plenty who expressed surprise when the four-year-old’s new home was revealed, and some ridicule. Greatrex himself gently responded with humour on the artist formerly known as Twitter to the latter.

But let’s be fair. Mighty Bandit is joining a trainer with a proven Grade One track record. After all, he saddled Cole Harden to win a Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham, sent La Bague Au Roi to the 2019 Dublin Racing Festival and snared the Flogas Novice Chase, while One Track Mind headed to Punchestown and came home with their Stayers’ Hurdle in the spring of 2016.

Give him the ammunition and he’ll do the job. And for the sport to thrive in Britain, or at least to even start showing some green shoots of recovery, people like Warren Greatrex need to have good horses again.

Ben Pauling is enjoying a purple patch with a host of exciting young prospects and the emerging force of Harry Derham came home with a couple of choice lots from the same sale with Imagine (€320,000) and Mollys Mango (€170,000).

One of the changes we need in the sport of jumps racing is increased competition. And that doesn’t mean the odd big name drifting from Messrs Mullins or Elliott to Nicholls or Henderson.

It means the owners who continue to throw big money at a winter game where financial rewards are limited, and the emotional toll of the darkest days potentially overwhelming, should be thanked for thinking outside the box, for strengthening the hand of those who aspire to be at the top table rather than currently enjoy a seat there.

More good horses with more good trainers is a healthy ambition. Monday’s additions are a trickle – there’s no sign of a flood – but welcome, nonetheless.

Mighty Bandit might not win the Triumph Hurdle, he may never get close to recovering his purchase price, let alone the training fees that will be paid out month-after-month. But he might.

And that’s the dream the Bryces and others continue to buy into despite the clouds that sometimes circle overhead – and so does every trainer up and down the land.

They need hope – and a good horse – and Mighty Bandit heading to Rhonehurst is worthy of celebration, not ridicule.

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