page_title: Brave Inca
section_title: Rise to the Championship (2004–2006)
hierarchical_section_title: Brave Inca / Rise to the Championship (2004–2006)
caption_attribution_description: English: O'Brien's pub, Killenagh Cross Roads, Co. Wexford A popular thatched pub in rural north Wexford.
context_page_description: Brave Inca is a retired Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. In a career that lasted from March 2002 until April 2009, he ran thirty-five times and won 15 races, ten of them at Grade I level. including the 2006 Champion Hurdle. From 2005 until he was retired, Brava Inca ran in sixteen successive Grade I races.
context_section_description: In the 2004/5 season, Brave Inca won once from seven starts. On his debut at Dromore in November, he narrowly failed to give 10 lbs to Macs Joy, a horse he met many times over the subsequent seasons. Later in the same month, he ran second to the mare Solerina in the two-and-a-half-mile Hatton's Grace Hurdle. Two more second places followed in the December Festival Hurdle and the Irish Champion Hurdle with Macs Joy victorious on both occasions.
  Brave Inca was sent off as a 10-1 chance for his first attempt at the Champion Hurdle in March 2005. In an eventful race, he finished third, beaten two necks by Hardy Eustace, who won his second championship, and Harchibald, who had seemed certain to win after the final hurdle. As a result of this effort, Brave Inca was sent off 2-1 favourite for the Aintree Hurdle but fell for the first and only time in his career. A season of near-misses ended as he rallied after being headed close home to defeat Harchibald and Macs Joy in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle, in which he was ridden for the first time by Tony McCoy
  Although he was already seven years old at the start of the 2005/6 season, Brave Inca appeared to be reaching his peak, an impression that was confirmed when McCoy rode him to victory in the Morgiana Hurdle, beating Harchibald and Macs Joy again. After another failed attempt at the Hatton's Grace Hurdle, he confirmed his superiority over the best two-mile hurdlers in Ireland with an "easy" and "convincing" victory in the December Festival Hurdle after which he was quoted as 5-1 joint favourite for the Championship. A triumph in the Irish Champion Hurdle  meant that he was seen as the potential champion by the time of the 2006 Cheltenham Festival Sent off 7-4 favourite in a field of 18, Brave Inca landed the odds in the Champion Hurdle, winning by a length from Macs Joy, with Hardy Eustace three lengths back in third. "He's all there," said Murphy after the race. "He's a complete horse now." On his final start of the season, Brave Inca finished second to Macs Joy in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle.
caption: O'Brien's thatched pub at Killenagh, a gathering point for Brave Inca's supporters[11]
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