It is just four months since her father passed away and Sandra Hughes has a definite view of her role in getting the leading Ladbrokes World Hurdle fancy Lieutenant Colonel, as well as the JLT contender, The Tullow Tank, to Cheltenham today.
“It is a privilege for me to get them here. I’m very aware I inherited them and I simply wanted to get them to where Dad wanted them to go,” she says. “Now I can only hope they do Dad justice.”
Since Dessie Hughes’ passion for racing was exceeded only by his love of family, one can imagine the pride he would have felt at watching his daughter pick up the reins at his Curragh yard with such aplomb.
As evidenced by his son Richard’s recent announcement he is set to pack in a luminous riding career to start training next year, the all-consuming and endlessly pressurised job of moulding equine careers is in the Hughes DNA.
The champion jockey’s sister didn’t assume a licence with a similarly high profile but she has maintained the rhythm of the famous Osborne Lodge stables without missing a beat.
“It hasn’t been a culture shock. I was very much involved in all aspects of the business anyway. When Dad got sick the year before last I took control when he was in hospital until he came out. Everything stayed the same. It still has. The only thing missing really is Dad,” she says.
The scale of that absence can only be guessed at within the Hughes family but racing-wise Cheltenham’s officials appropriately moved to name their leading trainer award after the man who was a festival fixture for so long.
It is forty years since Dessie Hughes rode his first Cheltenham winner, Davy Lad in the 1975 Sun Alliance Hurdle. Two years later that same horse landed the Gold Cup. Two years after that Monksfield landed a legendary Champion Hurdle victory under the jockey once memorably described as “lean like a gunfighter and just as deadly when the chips are down.”
In 1982 Miller Hill’s Supreme kicked off a training career subsequently highlighted by Hardy Eustace’s back to back Champion Hurdles in 2004-05. If that race represented a high, then Our Conor’s fatal fall in last year’s Champion was a spectacular low, although one resolutely kept in perspective by his trainer.
“Dad always kept these things in the right perspective. It was a terrible shock and a huge loss to the yard. But Danny (Mullins) on his back was OK and at the end of the day that’s all that matters,” says Sandra Hughes who is attempting to become just the second woman to train a World Hurdle winner.
Lieutenant Colonel has been a flagship horse for the new trainer this season, securing an initial Grade 1 success in late-November’s Hatton’s Grace Hurdle at Fairyhouse but looking even better when upped to three miles for Leopardstown’s Grade 1 over Christmas.
That pair of top-flight wins has already justified Dessie Hughes’s instinct that returning to hurdles rather than continue a novice chase campaign was a correct policy with the Gigginstown runner. And Lieutenant Colonel looks like an improver going into today’s race.
“Dad always felt another year over hurdles would crown him,” she says. “And he ran exceptionally well last season at Cheltenham behind Faugheen. So you could imagine better ground will help him again. He is a form horse. He’s won two Grade 1’s and you can’t get away from that.”
In 1976 her father rode the winner of today’s race - when it was known as the Stayers Hurdle - with Bit Of A Jig, a year when the Irishman doubled up with Parkhill in another Sun Alliance Hurdle.
His daughter also has a double opportunity today and although The Tullow Tank’s odds reflect a largely underwhelming season so far, Hughes expects better in the JLT.
“Apart from the first day he won over fences, he’s had a few problems. But we were happier with him the last day when he jumped much better,” she says, giving the impression the horse named after Irish rugby international Sean O’Brien will step up appreciably.
Win or not, it will feel like a strange Cheltenham for a family whose lives have revolved around this week for decades.
“It will be very emotional anyway. But I haven’t felt the same excitement this year. Dad was Cheltenham to us,” Hughes says. “But hopefully he will be shining down on us and a winner would make it fantastic.”
