The Goffs Land Rover Sale continued to make headlines on the third day of the 2022 Cheltenham Festival with another Grade 1 victory, this time in the day’s championship race.
Flooring Porter’s second successive triumph in the Stayers’ Hurdle for Gavin Cromwell, the Flooring Porter Syndicate and Danny Mullins was the third Grade 1 win by a Land Rover Sale graduate at this year’s Festival and it was a 1-3 in the race for the Land Rover Sale as Paisley Park, victorious in the 2019 renewal and third to Flooring Porter last year, was sold at Kildare Paddocks in 2015. Not only was the sale celebrating a 1-3 in the race, so too was Richard Rohan who bought both Flooring Porter and Paisley Park as foals and offered them through his brother-in-law Michael Moore’s Ballincurrig House Stud at the Land Rover Sale.
Rohan purchased Flooring Porter, who was bred by Sean Murphy, from Ryehill Stables at the 2015 Goffs December National Hunt Sale and he is now the producer of eight Cheltenham Festival winners headed by the Gold Cup heroes Looks Like Trouble and War Of Attrition.
“I am delighted with the result especially as they weren’t expensive horses and I try to buy around 20 foals every year that are relatively inexpensive to sell as three-year-olds so to have two of them go on to be Stayers’ Hurdles winners is wonderful,” said the delighted Rohan.
“He was out of a good racemare and by Yeats who I was fond of as a stallion and I liked him as a foal. I don’t spend too much time going over pedigrees, I like to see a nice, athletic individual and go from there. He didn’t leave me much profit when I resold him but he has paid me back many times over
“He was always a little tiger and I knew he was going to make it as a racehorse because he had that attitude, he is a big man in a small man’s body like a terrier and was always the boss of the group.
“It is great to see a syndicate winning a Grade 1 race at Cheltenham with a horse that was relatively inexpensive. It shows that racing is for everyone and it is important that people going to the sales with less than €20,000 to spend see that it is possible to buy top-class horses for an affordable price. Hopefully that encourages people to come to the Goffs Land Rover Sale and see the Ballincurrig House Stud draft this year."