From Cheltenham March Sale graduate to festival winner for Love Envoi

Rewind 12 months or so ago and unbeaten Ryanair Mares' Novices' Hurdle winner Love Envoi was being picked up for just £38,000 at the Tattersalls Cheltenham March Sale. A year later, she can now count herself a Cheltenham Festival winner.

Having been well supported to retain her unbeaten record in the Grade 2 contest on Thursday, the six-year-old travelled and jumped well to lead home a British-trained one-two, with the big-priced Ahorsewithnoname a length and a quarter behind in second.

A daughter of Coolmore's Castle Hyde Stud resident Westerner, she was completing a festival double for syndicate-owned mares, following on from Middleham Park's Marie's Rock's success in the Mares' Hurdle on Tuesday.

Love Envoi was bred by Ciaran O'Toole and made her only bumper start for Sean Doyle a winning one when landing the spoils at Wexford, before heading to Cheltenham at the end of March last year.

It was there she was picked up by former Cheltenham Festival-winning rider-turned Goffs UK bloodstock manager Jerry McGrath for £38,000 from Monbeg Stables.

Thursday's result was a victory of some significance for another ex-rider Noel Fehily, whose Noel Fehily Racing Syndicate owns the talented mare.

The former top-class jockey had ridden trainer Harry Fry's last festival winner, in the shape of 2016 Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle winner Unowhatimeanharry.

Fehily said: "I told Johnny [Burke] not to be afraid to take his time because I knew a lot of them wouldn’t get up the hill and I knew she would - he was just in the perfect position the whole way, it was just poetry to watch.

"We weren’t committing all week as to whether we’d even be running, but there was a bit of rain forecast yesterday and the heavens opened, so someone was looking down on us."

He continued: "We just bought her because we really liked her at the sales, we thought she was a bit of value and she’d won her bumper. You dream you’d win a couple of races but you don’t think you’re going to win at Cheltenham. I know how hard it is to win at the Cheltenham Festival, so to have got one here is unbelievable."

Love Envoi is the ninth foal out of Love Divided - a King's Ride half-sister to useful winning chaser and hurdler Contempo Suite - and the first black-type winner for her dam, having previously struck in the Jane Seymour Mares' Novices' Hurdle at Sandown last month.

Love Envoi is in turn a half-sister to two winners in Yeats mare Timeless Beauty - a winner over fences for Fergal O'Brien at Wetherby last month - and two-time rules scorer Belcanto, a daughter of Royal Whip Stakes winner and multiple Group 1-placed Bach.

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