Brave Inca

Brave Inca
Brave Inca at the Cheltenham Festival in 2005.
Sire	Good Thyne
Dam	Wigwam Mam
Damsire	Commanche Run
Sex	Gelding
Foaled	1998
Country	Ireland
Colour	Bay
Breeder	D W McAuley
Owner	Novices Syndicate
Trainer	Colm Murphy
Record	35: 15-8-4
Earnings	£971,332
Major wins
Champion Hurdle (2006) Supreme Novices' Hurdle (2004) Irish Champion Hurdle (2006,2009) December Festival Hurdle (2005, 2006) Punchestown Champion Hurdle (2005) Deloitte Novice Hurdle (2004) Evening Herald Champion Novice Hurdle (2004) Hatton's Grace Hurdle (2006)
Awards
Anglo-Irish Jump Horse of the Year (2006)

Brave Inca (foaled 20 April 1998) 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.

Brave Inca was bred in Ireland by D W McAuley. His sire was Good Thyne, an American-bred stallion who produced the winners of over 600 jumps races in Britain and Ireland. He was the first foal of his dam, the unraced Wigwam Mam. He was sold as a foal for 1,600gns at Tattersalls and as a yearling for IR£6,000, eventually becoming the property of the Novices Syndicate. He was trained throughout his career by Colm Murphy in the village of Killenagh, near Gorey, County Wexford.

Brave Inca began his career by running unplaced in minor hurdle races at Navan and Wexford in March of the 2001/2002 season. The following season began similarly with down-the-field efforts in minor hurdle events at Fairyhouse and Naas. In these two races, he was ridden by Barry Cash, who became his regular jockey for the next three seasons. In March 2003, he was switched to National Hunt flat races and began to show improvement, winning "bumpers" at Fairyhouse and Navan by wide margins.

Because of his early failures, Brave Inca entered the 2003/2004 season as a novice hurdler. He then went unbeaten in five starts. After picking up two handicaps before Christmas, he won his first major prize by defeating Newmill in the Grade I Deloitte Novice Hurdle. At Cheltenham, he was sent of 7-2 favourite for the Supreme Novices' Hurdle and won by a neck over future Cheltenham Gold Cup winner War of Attrition. The win provoked "near-hysterical" celebrations among the large Irish contingent, with Colm Murphy being carried shoulder-high into the winner's enclosure. In his final start of the season in the Evening Herald Champion Novice Hurdle at Punchestown, Brave Inca defeated the English-trained Top Novices' Hurdle winner Royal Shakespeare by a short head.