BALLYGUNNER Castle is a country house in Co Waterford, believed to have been built on the site of a former Viking stronghold.

The Vikings were a seafaring people from Scandinavia who were feared throughout Europe and further afield, and they first came to Ireland in 795, while a second and more intensive period of Viking settlement here began in 914. Among their activities in Kerry was to plunder Skellig Michael, while Smerwick Harbour’s name derives from Norse words that means butter harbour.

These raids were all carried out in the search for dominance, and Willie Mullins has also exerted a type of dominance in Kerry, but this has been in the Grade 3 Guinness Kerry National. He won it for the fifth time this week with a horse named Ballygunner Castle, bred by Patrick Keating, and this son of Soldier Of Fortune (Galileo) is from one of the best and most enduring female lines in Irish National Hunt breeding, one associated with the Keating family for many decades.

Mullins the trainer was teaming up with his nephew Danny Mullins to land the near €120,000 first prize, and Mullins the jockey was winning the Listowel feature for the third time. It was a first chase win for the seven-year-old Ballygunner Castle, and he previously won a pair of bumpers from just three starts in that code, a hurdle race and was placed in a couple of graded hurdle races from six outings, and now at the sixth attempt over fences he has finally come good.

Welcomed

This win will have been welcomed by both Aubrey McMahon and Kevin Ross. The latter was acting with Chris Jones when buying a Crystal Ocean (Sea The Stars) half-brother to the Kerry National winner two years ago for €39,000, and past experience would suggest that he will be reoffered next year as a store. At the 2025 Goffs Arkle Sale, Aubrey McMahon gave €82,000 for Mount Eaton’s three-year-old half-sister, also by Crystal Ocean, to Ballygunner Castle and she has been named Fassagh Rose. She had been purchased as a yearling for €30,000.

That was a more profitable pinhook for Mount Eaton than Ballygunner Castle was. John Hore gave €29,000 for this week’s winner as a foal at Tattersalls Ireland, and took him to the 2022 Goffs Land Rover Sale to resell, getting €68,000 from Harold Kirk and Willie Mullins. That investment has been repaid with some interest.

Ballygunner Castle might be the sole winner from Hear The Thunder (Presenting), but the once-raced mare has had only a couple of runners. Understandably, Hear The Thunder raced from Willie Mullins’ Closutton Stables, as she is a full-sister to that yard’s Yorkhill (Presenting).

That winner 11 times, and of a point-to-point, won four Grade 1 races, three over hurdles and once over fences. The quartet comprised a trio of novice hurdle races, at Cheltenham (the Bingham), Aintree (the Mersey), and the Tolworth at Sandown, and it was at Cheltenham that he won the JLT Golden Miller Novices’ Chase.

Recent star

A more recent star at Closutton from this immediate family has been Fun Fun Fun (Martaline). A Grade 2 bumper winner at the Dublin Racing Festival, she has shown great versatility to win at Grade 3 level over hurdles and fences. She is the best winner for yet another full-sibling to Yorkhill and to the dam of Ballygunner Castle.

The third dam of Ballygunner Castle, the unraced Park Breeze (Strong Gale), posted an outstanding record at stud. She bred six winners, they won 39 races on the track and 15 point-to-points, and all but one of them won blacktype races.

Lightning Breeze (Saddlers’ Hall), the dam of Yorkhill, is a half-sister to five graded National Hunt winners, two at Grade 1 level. They are The Listener (Roselier), whose wins at the highest level comprised the Lexus Chase, the John Durkan Punchestown Chase, the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup and the jnwine.com Champion Chase, and the Ellier Novice Chase winner Offshore Account (Oscar).

Park Breeze’s other big National Hunt winners are Distant Thunder (Phardante) at Grade 2 level, and the Grade 3 winners Fork Lightning (Roselier) and Dooneys Gate (Oscar), and all of her five graded winners earned their principal successes over fences. Fork Lightning was a Cheltenham Festival winner of the National Hunt Chase.

Risk Of Thunder

Park Breeze was a full-sister to the Enda Bolger-trained Risk Of Thunder (Strong Gale), successful 13 times over fences, five times in point-to-points, and runner-up in the gruelling Velka Pardubicka. The Keating clan have had the family since 1930 and Yorkhill, I recall Pat Keating telling me once, was from the eighth generation they had owned. What a proud achievement that is, and it goes on.

Since the days of Risk Of Thunder, the Keatings have bred nine blacktype winners from the line, and that roll of honour also includes Enterprise Park (Goldmark), a Grade 3 winner over hurdles, and Gallant Oscar (Oscar), successful in a Grade 2 chase at the Punchestown Festival.

Soldier Of Fortune Soldier of Fortune won the Irish Derby and the following year added the Group 1 Coronation Cup to his final tally of six wins. He did not race at five, and was initially retired to stand at Haras du Logis Saint-Germain in Normandy, in partnership with Coolmore.

After six seasons there, and shuttling to South America, he moved to The Beeches Stud, but retired from active duty in 2025.