CASTLEMAHON trainer Terence Leonard has run three horses this season and after wins at Lisronagh on Saturday and Dawstown on Monday, he now has a 100% strike rate.

The Vertical Speed bay Tallyho, who runs in the colours of Terence’s partner Deirdre Connolly, made a winning debut in the five and six-year-old mares’ maiden at Belclare on March 13th and she is due to start in the mares’ point-to-point bumper at Tipperary next Thursday.

Tallyho was partnered to victory by Chris O’Donovan but Darragh Allen was in the saddle when Deirdre’s seven-year-old Scorpion mare Ross Kitty won division two of the older horses’ maiden at Lisronagh last Saturday. The seven-year-old, who really needs good ground, beat the geldings Fact Flow and Master King by a neck and seven lengths.

On Monday, at Dawstown, John O’Connor got the leg up on Terence’s homebred Kings Eclipse who landed the older geldings’ maiden for novice riders by six lengths. The six-year-old Double Eclipse gelding is a half-brother to the Rudimentary mare Wednesday Girl who had a colt foal by Cloudings this week for Leonard and for Connolly, breeder of the 2014 Irish National winner Shutthefrontdoor.

BREEDING

The pair are still very involved in breeding and producing sport horses and are hoping to qualify the Colin Diamond gelding Hardingville For Suir for the five-year-old young event horse class at Dublin. Leonard has already had a major success in the sport horse sphere this year as he ‘found’ a half-sister to Bruce Davison’s four-star eventer Ballynoe Castle RM (named after Leonard’s home) and the 14-year-old is now in foal to the popular eventing sire OBOS Quality 004.