Cheltenham Festival Sire Rankings:

Cheltenham Festival sire rankings: The stallions who shaped modern jump racing.

Cheltenham Racecourse

The Cheltenham Festival is many things — theatre, heartbreak, spectacle — but at its core it's a breeding story. Every winner that flies up the hill has a stallion somewhere in the bloodline who helped put it there.

So who are the sires that have truly dominated the Festival since the turn of the millennium?

We've ranked the top three by the number of individual races won since 2000, and the results make for fascinating reading — Robin Des Champs, Presenting and King's Theatre ranked by Festival winners.

3rd: Robin Des Champs — 14 Festival winners

Robin Des Champs was bred and owned by Nicolas de Lageneste at the Haras de Saint-Voir, a vast 220-hectare estate in the Allier region of central France that has been in the family for six generations.

Born in 1997, he was available to breed in France from 2001 until 2010, standing at Saint-Voir itself in those early years. He was later exported to Ireland in 2008, where he joined the Cashman family's celebrated Glenview Stud operation near Fermoy in County Cork — the National Hunt arm of the wider Rathbarry empire.

Deauville Racecourse in France where Robin Des Champs was bred

What a stallion he was to have in your yard. His five Festival scorers were almost entirely the handiwork of Willie Mullins's extraordinary Closutton operation.

Mullins trained the six-time David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle champion Quevega, as well as Vautour in the Ryanair Chase and the Supreme Novices' Hurdle.

Willie Mullins at Gowran Park

Sir Des Champs, who won the Martin Pipe in 2011 and Golden Miller in 2012, was likewise trained by Mullins; Sir Des Champs was bred in France by Dominique Clayeux. Un Temps Pour Tout, twice winner of the Ultima, was trained by David Pipe, while Gordon Elliott handled Blow By Blow — the only one of the five to have been conceived in Ireland.

The story of Robin Des Champs is ultimately about what happens when an exceptional sire is transplanted before those around him fully understand what he needs.

His French numbers were remarkable; his Irish numbers, while decent, never quite matched up. The simplest explanation is that his French-bred stock benefited from earlier jumping education that the Irish system wasn't yet consistently delivering. You could have had the Mona Lisa on your wall and not known what you were looking at.

His son Cokoriko, who stands at Haras de Cercy in France, already has a Cheltenham Festival winner to his name in Iroko and looks capable of carrying the family flag significantly further.

2nd: Presenting — 15 Festival winners

Presenting was bred by the American owner George Strawbridge and trained by John Gosden, for whom he took the Listed Autumn Stakes at two and ran admirably as a 3yo — finishing a close third to Lammtarra in the Derby, then winning the Gordon Stakes and Geoffrey Freer Stakes. That's a proper racehorse by any standard.

He was retired to Glenview Stud in 1997 and stood his first seasons there at very modest fees, eventually working his way up to €12,000 — a big sum in jumps breeding terms — in 2011 and 2012.

The Cashman family had him throughout, and Liam Cashman's famous eye for a stallion served them magnificently here. Glenview Stud was opened in 1991 specifically to handle the growing demand for National Hunt stallions, and Presenting became its defining resident.

Magic Dream at Glenview Stud

His Festival winners were spread beautifully across the training ranks. Denman, War Of Attrition and Weapon's Amnesty all came through Paul Nicholls' Ditcheat stable.

Nicky Henderson handled Rajdhani Express. Tim Easterby trained Ballabriggs. Philip Hobbs, who seemingly had a sixth sense for the sire, prepared First Lieutenant, Fingal Bay and several others. Yorkhill was another Mullins production.

He leaves a glittering roll-call of top-class progeny headed by Denman, who steamrolled his way to the 2008 Gold Cup. As a jumping factory, Glenview Stud never produced anything quite like him.

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