Farewell spring run on the cards for Cheveley stalwart Envoi Allen

The Cheveley Park Stud team are leaning towards a spring swansong for Envoi Allen following his record-breaking third victory in the Ladbrokes Champion Chase.

Although in the twilight of his career at the age of 11, Henry de Bromhead’s charge proved the fire still burns bright with an emphatic success at Down Royal earlier this month, adding to his previous triumphs in the Grade One contest in 2022 and 2024.

There was some suggestion that could be a fitting end to a glorious career which has seen Envoi Allen win 10 top-level prizes in all including three victories at the Cheltenham Festival, but connections are in favour of rolling the dice one more time.

Reflecting on his Down Royal hat-trick, Cheveley Park director Richard Thompson told the PA news agency: “It’s hard to put it into words, isn’t it? Ten Grade Ones, 11 years old, a three-time Cheltenham winner – what can you say?

“He loves Down Royal, we know that, and we know that he runs well fresh. But he did win it convincingly – it looked like he was accelerating away from the others and it was probably his most impressive win there yet. All in all, I couldn’t quite believe that he could win like that.”

On what the future holds, Thompson continued: “I think if he’d run respectably and finished second or third, we might have retired him. (But) I think having won it like that, I think we’re inclined to give him one more race, I would have thought – it feels like one more race in the spring and as Henry said, run him fresh.

“We’re not going to run him in the King George at Kempton over Christmas as we’ve tried that twice post-Down Royal and it hasn’t worked.

“The Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham is definitely a possibility, he’s run in it three times and won it and finished second and third. But you sense, as he’s getting a bit older and given the way he won the other day over three miles, it might be more sensible to run him over three miles somewhere. Then again he does like Cheltenham, so we’ll see.

“This horse has given us everything over what is now going to be eight seasons so we need to think carefully about whether we go for glory at Cheltenham or run him in a more sensible situation. Either way I think we’ve ruled out running him at Christmas and potentially we’ll go more one more time in the spring, whether that’s Cheltenham or somewhere else.”

With Cheveley Park cutting back their National Hunt interests in the immediate future, Envoi Allen’s upcoming retirement will bring an end to what has been a golden period over jumps for the famous red, white and blue silks.

“We’ve been so lucky with Envoi, A Plus Tard and Allaho. It’s unbelievable we bought those three horses in the space of a few weeks in the spring of 2018 and I think between them they’ve won 18 Grade Ones, including seven wins at Cheltenham,” Thompson added.

“I think we’ve got seven jumps horses right now, including Envoi Allen and Grangeclare West and Quilixios. We’re not buying any more for the moment. We’re a Flat operation that decided to get a few horses over jumps and we pulled it off – I think after Envoi’s win the other day that puts us on 27 Grade Ones since 2019 with what has really been a small pool of horses.

“We’ve won the Gold Cup and so many big races, we’ll never get over it to be honest with you. You never know in the future, one day we might go again, but at the moment we’ve got our small squad and we’re happy with that.”