page_title: Flyingbolt
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Flyingbolt / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Flyingbolt as a yearling and as a three-year-old
context_page_description: Flyingbolt was a famous racehorse. Officially he is the second best National Hunt racehorse of all time, after Arkle. A comparison of their merits is probably best illustrated by the Official Steeplechase Handicapper, who at the end of the 1965-1966 season rated Arkle the superior by only 1 lb. Timeform, the highly respected racing publication, had a difference of 2 lbs between them. As a hurdler, Flyingbolt was the best Tom Dreaper ever trained. His wins included the Gloucestershire Hurdle at Cheltenham and the Scalp Hurdle at Leopardstown. He also finished third in the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham. Flyingbolt and Arkle never met on the race track, mainly because they were trained by the same man and he preferred to keep them apart.
context_section_description: Flyingbolt was born in 1959 in unusual circumstances. His sire Airborne, the 1946 Derby winner, had become almost totally impotent by 1958 having only managed to get 3 mares in foal in each of his previous 2 seasons at stud. As a result, he was of little interest to breeders, so local man Robert Way gave him a home on his small stud farm where he housed a few mares of his own. Aware of his near non-existent reproductive history in recent years, Way put him into a paddock as a companion for the retired 19-year-old  mare Eastlock, which he had purchased for 50 guineas at a dispersal sale in 1941 and whose tenth and last foal was born 3 years previously in 1955. However, the outcome was a chestnut colt  born the following spring. There was little to recommend the newborn in terms of his pedigree, with his sire being deemed a failure at stud and none of his first 12 dams having ever set foot on a racecourse. Way sold him as a foal at the Newmarket December Sales for 210 guineas to Larry Ryan from Co. Clare in Ireland. After winning in the show ring as a yearling, he was offered for sale that autumn at the Ballsbridge sales in Dublin through the Rathmore Stud owned by six-time Irish champion jockey Martin Molony, and was bought by George Ponsonby for 490 guineas. Ponsonby had already purchased a number of top performers who went into training with Tom Dreaper. This one did likewise and was passed on to Mrs. Jean Wilkinson, who combined the names of his sire (Airborne) and dam (Eastlock) to give him the name Flyingbolt.
caption: Flyingbolt as a younger horse
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