'There's no point us and Coolmore bidding against each other when we can share'

Old rivals on the track, briefly stablemates in Willie Mullins' yard and with 15 Grade 1 triumphs between them including in the Irish and French Champion Hurdles, Apple's Jade and Benie Des Dieux were two of jump racing's stars of the last decade.

On this spectacular summer's morning the dynamic duo are reunited in a verdant paddock close to the banks of the Boyne, a river replete with historic and mythic resonance in Ireland. The brilliant mares are the foundations upon which Noel and Valerie Moran are building the future of Bective Stud.

The couple's white and green silks have grown ever more familiar to racegoers on both sides of the Irish Sea over the last five or six years, but with the acquisition and remarkable transformation of the Bective Estate between Trim and Navan, and mere miles from where Noel Moran grew up, they have moved beyond racing into the realm of breeding.