An Irish Getaway for popular chaser Ms Parfois

Ms Parfois is to become one of the foundations of a new National Hunt breeding venture for Delia and Gary Woodley, who bought the classy chaser shortly after her retirement.

One of the most popular jumping mares of recent years, collected on seven occasions during her career, including twice at Listed level over fences, and finished second in both the National Hunt Chase and the Mildmay at Aintree. Trained by Anthony Honeyball, she filled the runner-up position once again with a laudable effort under a big weight in the Midlands National and had been due to contest the Grand National itself only for injury to intervene.

The white-faced chestnut, who is by and from a good jumping family, has already travelled to Ireland for a meeting with Grange Stud’s Getaway.

"Anthony had said that he thought because he’s an up-and-coming stallion," Delia Woodley explained.

"So I asked Coolmore if they could look at her breeding and see what they would think, they’re the experts, and they came up with Getaway too, so obviously Anthony is an expert as well!"

Woodley said that a deal to take Ms Parfois on from her owner Martyn Chapman was wrapped up very quickly, helped by the fact that they are in several syndicates together with other Honeyball horses.

"I followed her and someone else in the syndicate said when she had done the National she may be finished and that’s it," she said. "I’d said to them at the time, 'if that mare ever comes up for stud then I’ll buy her'. So when she picked up the injury I got a text from them saying Martyn was going to sell her to stud, and was I really serious.

"I phoned Martyn, he’d already had an offer by that time, but I asked what he wanted for her and that’s it, she was sold. He said he’d rather she came to me because he doesn’t live far from me so, he can come and see her and get to be involved with the foals. It all happened in an instant, one of those things I wasn’t expecting but because I love the mare, I thought I can’t let this pass by, I have to buy her."

Anthony Honeyball: will train Ms Parfois's future sons and daughters

The Woodleys have plenty of experience breeding sport horses and Shetland ponies but are now taking a firm stride into the world of thoroughbreds as they establish Kingswood Stud near Alton in Hampshire.

"I have another two in training with Anthony that are going to go to stud when they’re done, one’s going to run for another year and come back here, and we might add another one or two," Delia said. "That’ll be as many as we have, we’re not going to do it on any large scale, just try to get good quality mares.

"Ms Parfois will be the first. Once in she’s in foal she’ll come back here and then she’ll go back to Coolmore to foal and be covered again. Then the foal and her will come back here and we’ll just have the same process each time."

Honeyball, who bought Ms Parfois for £50,000 after she won a maiden Irish point-to-point three years ago, can also look forward to being an integral part of the story into the future.

"When they’re two they’ll go off to Anthony to be trained, he’ll get the first one and the ones thereon after," she added. "It’ll be interesting, I hope we can breed something nice."

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