Between 2000/01 and 2007/08, Warwickshire-based engineer Roger Stephen Brookhouse was a moderately successful permit holder in his own right but, more recently, has found fame as a high-profile National Hunt owner on both sides of the Irish Sea. As far as the Cheltenham Festival is concerned, Brookhouse finally broke his duck when the talented, but fragile, Cheltenian won the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 2011.
Trained by Philip Hobbs and ridden by Richard Johnson, Cheltenian was ridden clear in the closing stages to win by 5 lengths at odds of 14/1. Cheltenian ran at the next four Cheltenham Festivals, but failed to trouble the judge in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, the Vincent O’Brien County Handicap Hurdle three times, including when favourite in 2014. In fact, despite a promising start to his career, Cheltenian won just twice over hurdles, a lowly maiden event at Uttoxeter, at odds of 2/7, in 2013 and the Scottish Champion Hurdle at Ayr two years later.
Indeed, it was a few years before Brookhouse saw his light blue and pink silks carried to victory at the Cheltenham Festival again. In 2014, though, former point-to-point winner Western Warhorse, who was having just his second run over regulation fences, gamely beat Champagne Fever – who was chasing a Festival hat-trick, after winning the Weatherbys Champion Bumper in 2012 and the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 2013 – in the Arkle Challenge Trophy. Trained by David Pipe and ridden by Tom Scudamore, Western Warhorse produced a strong run from the final fence to wear down the leader in the final hundred yards and led in the last stride for a shock 33/1 victory.
More recently – in fact, as recently as 2018 – Brookhouse enjoyed further Cheltenham Festival success when Summerville Boy, trained by Tom George and ridden by Noel Fehily, won the opening Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Summerville Boy had already beaten the eventual runner-up, Kalashnikov, by 4 lengths in the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown on his previous start in January, but had to call on all his resources to win by a neck, on identical terms, at Cheltenham.