Champ Kiely the poster boy for Tattersalls Ireland and Ennel Bloodstock

As January rolls into the second month of the year, the Tattersalls Ireland February National Hunt Sale heralds the start of a new year of auctions in Ireland and with it the renewed hope that each vendor and purchaser holds that they could be the seller or buyer of a champion.

Champ Kiely earned poster boy status with his victory in the Grade 1 Lawlor's of Naas Novice Hurdle this month, but the Ocovango gelding isn't the first star to emerge from either this sale or the foals offered by Cyril O'Hara's Ennel Bloodstock.

There's every chance that at around 3.15pm on Saturday another graduate of O'Hara's Westmeath academy will achieve further honours as Stattler lines up in the Irish Gold Cup, the centrepiece on the brimming banqueting table that is the first day of the Dublin Racing Festival.

Last season's National Hunt Chase winner, who was a close second to Minella Indo on his seasonal reappearance in the Savills Chase at Tramore on New Year's Day, is a homebred for O'Hara, who offered the Stowaway gelding at the 2017 February Sale. 

In addition to breeding and selling his and his family's own stock, O'Hara produces foals for clients, which is how a year after Stattler's appearance in the Fairyhouse sales ring Ennel Bloodstock consigned the Ocovango colt foal bred by Ian Dullea.

O'Hara swiftly recalls the youngster, saying: "Champ Kiely looks like a promising horse and is doing everything right. He didn't make much as a foal but he is by Ocovango, who wasn't in vogue at the time and that's what happens when you're not in fashion. Having said that, he was a very nice foal, I remember him being a very straightforward foal.

"It was lovely to see that the other day because that's what you do it for really. You want them to go to the best homes, where they have a chance of getting the best out of them. He’s going the right way and it's very exciting."

Stattler: on his way to winning the National Hunt Chase under Patrick MullinsCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

The question of trends in sires and at the sales is one repeatedly raised in discourses around National Hunt breeding, with a widening divergence between sales horses and racehorses. 

For O'Hara the aim is the latter, but commercial imperatives cannot be ignored.

"I like to think that I’m breeding a racehorse; of course the engine needs to be oiled with sales, but at the end of the day you need to get results,” he says.

"I try to get to know my mares and what type of foals they breed, whether they breed them like themselves or like the sire, and then work out what stallions suit them best. You can't breed to all the most expensive sires commercially anyway as it’s an expensive game.”

Champ Kiely cost the relatively small sum of €6,500 when sold to Michael Murphy, while Stattler remained with O'Hara at €20,000. His half-brother Might I was part of the same Ennel Bloodstock draft as Champ Kiely and brought €10,500 from Bryan Murphy. The Fame And Glory gelding was second in the Grade 1 Mersey Novices' Hurdle last season, emphasising the calibre of foals Ennel Bloodstock brings to this sale.

The relatively inexpensive prices they garnered also illustrate vividly another picture of both breeding and selling.

"Champ Kiely wasn't an expensive foal so it just proves it can be done,” says O’Hara. “If you're buying foals and not worried about fashion, you’re buying the foal in front of you, it can be done.

"We don't know what the next trend in sires is going to be and I do understand it's hard on agents and people buying for somebody else to try to sell a sire that's not as well known as Blue Bresil and Walk In The Park, but there are good foals by other stallions, and there will be plenty of them in this sale that will turn out to be good racehorses but won't make headlines at the sales."

Monkfish: the dual Cheltenham Festival winner was bred by O'HaraCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

It's a deliberate policy on O'Hara's part to target the February Sale with foals born later in the spring.

"He’s probably the best-bred foal we have in the sale, he's a half-brother to Captain Cutter, who won the Challow Hurdle,” says O’Hara. “He’s a very racy foal and I like him a lot. There's something about him, he's a really good quality foal. He’s a May foal so we’ll see how he goes.”

Boardsmill Stud's young sire Poet's Word has the largest representation in the Ennel Bloodstock draft, with a nap hand of foals from the second Irish crop of the King George winner, and it is their temperament which sets them apart from their peers, according to O'Hara.

"Poet's Word is another young sire stamping his foals that I like and we have five by him to sell,” he says. “They’re all very similar - good-looking bays - and he was a good racehorse too. 

“He's interesting on breeding as he's from a different sireline. I like his foals and a big thing about them is their personalities; if they’re level-headed starting off it's a big help, and they all seem to have lovely temperaments and are easy to work with. The same would apply to the Affiniseas, they’re easy to work with too and we have a couple of foals by him here."

Affinisea's predecessor both at Whytemount Stud and as the busiest stallion in Europe was Stowaway, a sire with whom O'Hara enjoyed great success. Stattler is a son of Stowaway, as is dual Cheltenham Festival winner Monkfish, bred by O'Hara and sold as a foal at the Tattersalls November Sale.

"I loved Stowaway," he enthuses. "I always had great luck commercially with them and in breeding racehorses; he just worked. They had fabulous limbs and were always very correct, easy horses. 

“They were good-looking horses and easy to work with. I think every horse I bred by Stowaway won, either on the track or in point-to-points. Stattler and Monkfish were both out of Old Vic mares and that cross obviously worked too."

"They were late foals - Stattler was a May 17 foal and Might I a May 20 foal - so that's why they went to that sale,” he says. “We keep back our later foals for the February Sale as it gives them time to develop. You're not pushing them as hard and, as they get older, does it really matter if they were a March or May foal?"

The draft of 17 in Barn C contains a significant proportion of late foals, particularly the homebreds, and the question of numbers in the sale is another O'Hara gives consideration to when placing them.

"I think horses can stand out a bit more when there are less numbers in the sale," he says.

The draft is populated by the progeny of young sires in the main, with only a Soldier Of Fortune filly by a strongly established sire. A trio of up-and-coming National Hunt stallions come in for particular mention, and representation.

O’Hara says: "We have three by Order Of St George and he's a stallion I like, he seems to be stamping his stock, and any horse that stamps his foals is worth looking at.”

The first of them through the ring has an eyecatching pedigree; Lot 34 is a filly out of Royal Honey, who is a Court Cave half-sister to Our Honey, the dam of Stattler and Might I.

A solitary member of Crystal Ocean's second crop (191) is the pick of the bunch on pedigree.

Jonbon: his dam Star Face was bought by O'Hara and his sistersCredit: Edward Whitaker

Monkfish, a four-time Grade 1 winner, was O'Hara's first homebred Cheltenham winner and initiated a successful sequence of festival wins that could stretch to four in March. Entries for Monkfish and Stattler have given him cause to reflect.

"I was looking at the entries for the Gold Cup and two out of the 27 were bred here, which is extraordinary," he says. "It might never happen again, but the fact you have bred two horses that are entered in the Gold Cup from just ten or 12 mares, when you think of all the foals that are born over a three- or four-year period, it’s incredible."

Only Galopin Des Champs and Noble Yeats are shorter in the Gold Cup betting than Stattler, and O'Hara also has connections to Champ Kiely and another Grade 1 winner who is festival-bound in Jonbon. 

Along with his sisters Siobhan and Olive, he purchased Star Face, the Saint Des Saints mare who is the dam of Douvan and Jonbon and who now resides in Westmeath beside Our Honey, dam of Stattler and Might I, and sisters to Monkfish.

Star Face was bought when Jonbon was a three-year-old, and has produced a colt and filly by Doctor Dino for the O'Hara family. She was covered last year by Walk In The Park and will likely return to him again this spring. 

"When you have a proven mare you have to support her too," he says of the decision to use certain sires. "We wanted to buy a good mare and decided to go for her and hope we get a filly, and we have a daughter of hers by Doctor Dino. 

“When you have a good family you like to keep some of it. I don't have a sister to Stattler yet but hopefully the mare will produce a daughter soon. She foaled a lovely Blue Bresil colt last year."

February and the feast of St Brigid, matron saint of Ireland and Celtic goddess of spring, is an auspicious time to hold a sale when the hope of the new season dawns and with it the belief that a new champion can be discovered. Ennel Bloodstock's draft is the place to start that search at Fairyhouse.

The sale begins at 10am on Tuesday.