Andrew Bengough’s long and distinguished career in racing led to another landmark in September when he claimed his first European Group 1 success as a breeder.

Liberisque, a mare by Equiano who was raced by Bengough with partners before joining a small band of broodmares on his Herefordshire farm, has become the dam of the Flying Five Stakes  winner Arizona Blaze.

The Sergei Prokofiev colt’s slick performance at the Curragh under David Egan earns the 71-year-old a TBA Breeder of the Month garland.

“I’ve been around for a long time,” says Bengough self-deprecatingly.

The son of Colonel Sir Piers Bengough, the Queen’s representative at Ascot during the 1980s and four-time competitor in the Grand National, he followed his father’s interest in horses and was  riding out for Alec Kilpatrick by the age of 12.

Bengough had wanted to become a trainer and started out with Tony Balding, later spending two and a half years as pupil assistant to Dick Hern in the days of the brilliant but temperamental  sprinter Boldboy.

It was during that time his life changed.

“I caught meningitis at the December Sales, I’d gone there with Dick’s fillies,” he explains. “I went into a coma for six weeks and when I came round I’d lost my hearing.” It also resulted in a change of career and a successful life in the city which he still sustains to this day with Hampden, the Lloyd’s members’ agency.

Bengough continued to hunt for many years and had a pinhooking project with his father for a while.

“Now I just stick to mares,” he says.

“I’ve got six at home now, and five with the Cumanis. That all came about on a Sunday walk from Bedford House to their Fittocks Stud. There were some mares for sale and I picked my favourite  one out, she was by Darshaan and her Sadler’s Wells yearling was Fantasia [subsequently Group 1-placed] and the Montjeu foal Pink Symphony was bought by Jim and Fitri Hay but we’ve got one of her daughters, Volcanique, now.

“I was allowed by Luca to buy ten per cent of the package, that was all he would let me have!”

Bengough’s other interests with Fittocks include a share in Oasis Dream mare Dreamlike. She produced Program Trading, his first top-level winner when claiming the 2023 Saratoga Derby and now a multiple US Grade 1 star for Chad Brown.

He has other partnerships with mares in Norelands and Tweenhills Studs, but there is a particular pride that Arizona Blaze has the link with his own Arrow Farm & Stud near Hereford, run for 20 years by Karen Rawlings.

Liberisque was found by Amanda Skiffington for €32,000 from the Arqana October Sale and won a handicap at Chelmsford for Ed de Giles.

“We were pleased she managed to win a race and she’s doing very well now,” he says. “She’s a very good-looking mare, she’s got Galileo blood in her and a lovely temperament.”

Arizona Blaze is Liberisque’s third foal, following minor winner Sailthisshipalone, and made 36,000gns as a foal when consigned by Fittocks.

For Amo Racing and Adrian Murray he climbed quickly through the ranks, winning the Marble Hill Stakes as a two-year-old in the spring and continuing his form all the way through to a second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint.

This year he had been narrowly denied at Group 1 level again in the Commonwealth Cup before finally getting his reward.

Bengough received 190,000gns for his Blackbeard half-brother, who was bought by Coolmore and White Birch Farm when reoffered at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Sale and there should be another big result to come later this year, too.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had a filly out of Liberisque but she has a very nice half-brother to Arizona Blaze by Sioux Nation who is going to the December Foal Sale,” he says.

“I normally sell the colts as foals as I’ve only got 40 acres. Out of five mares this year, one was a maiden, one was barren and I got three colts, so they’re all going off in December.”

For a man who clearly relishes going racing and watching the various horses he has shares in, though, it has been just as exciting watching Arizona Blaze thrive in different colours.

“I think he’s the best horse I’ve bred,” he says. “With Luca we’ve had some good ones, but it’s been a wonderful ride with this one.”