A CANADIAN owner paid a record price for a show jumping foal at auction in Ireland last Friday at the Gallagher Dublin Horse Show when the hammer fell at €80,000 for CSF Shay Kann Cruz (Lot 9), Connolly Stud Farm’s full-brother to Shane Sweetnam’s multiple five-star winner CSF James Kann Cruz.
The inaugural RDS Elite Show Jumping Foal Sale in partnership with Goffs took place immediately after the Aga Khan Nations Cup on Friday afternoon at the top of the Laya Arena where crowds gathered with their paddles to bid on one of the 16 foals selected for this prestigious sale by international selectors Philipp Baumgart and Marcel Beukers. All but one changed hands, generating a total turnover of €469,000, an average price of €31,267.
Signing for the €80,000 top lot was Neil R MacGillivray from Alberta in Canada. Speaking to The Irish Field afterwards, he said: “I’ve been coming to the horse show for 12 or 13 years so it’s an annual event for me. I have horses with Paddy O’Donnell in the south east of Ireland and I have one horse with Greg Broderick in Tipperary. This is just pleasure for me.
“He was the only foal I was going to bid on. I wanted to buy into those good bloodlines. We are hoping it does well. It also helps the Irish owners and breeders to see that a well-bred horse can make a good profit. We have no plan at the minute but he will probably go to Paddy with our other horses. He won’t leave Ireland,” MacGillivray added.
Canadian Neil R MacGillivray paid €80,000 for CSF Shay Kann Cruz at the inaugural RDS Elite Show Jumping Foal Sale in partnership with Goffs \ Goffs
On behalf of the Connolly family, Shane Connolly said: “We are delighted; we were hoping the price would be up around that but you never know with the first year of a sale. It was a lovely setting and Goffs did a great job. The foal is a lot like James Kann Cruz and it would be a lovely full circle moment if he went on to jump in the main arena at the RDS.”
Special place
James B Keogh’s Grovendale Sports Horses went to €45,000 for another star of the inaugural catalogue, Finbar Mulligan’s Pembrook Kildare (Lot 4), a full-brother to Cian O’Connor’s Tokyo Olympic ride and five-star winner Kilkenny. By Olympic medallist VDL Cardento, the colt is out MHS Pembrook Lady, the same dam line as Greg Broderick’s Rio Olympic ride and multiple five-star winner MHS Going Global.
“He is a young foal with beautiful conformation, great balance and action from a top class family. If he is half the horse his brother is, this could be great fun,” Keogh said.
Commenting on the initiative, seller Finbar Mulligan said: “I think this whole sale in the RDS is a great development. I think Goffs did a fabulous job to get buyers for the foals. I thought the standard was really high. There’s an awful lot of long hours put in breeding horses, as every breeder knows, and it means something special actually to sell them in the main arena of the RDS - for my wife, my kids, my mother to be able to see, that was very good.
“It’s a special place to sell them. You’re selling when you have potential buyers in the country and I think there’s just a really good feel-good factor around the RDS. I think it was brilliant and I would love to see it established as an annual sale for there to be a vibrant foal market in Ireland so that people keep breeding good foals.”
On Pembrook Kildare, Mulligan added: “We were very happy. He has a very strong pedigree; we were very lucky that we bought into that pedigree about 10 years ago, that the Brennan family started, and it has been very lucrative for us. Because his dam is the mother of an Olympic show jumper and the sister of an Olympic show jumper, that makes her unique.”
Lucrative
The next best price was €42,000 for Lot 16, Anna Bobel’s Star Brilliance RF, a colt by Olympic champion Big Star and a sibling to 1.60m five-star performer Z Ice Cube Z. The hammer fell in favour of Anthony O’Gorman.
Co Galway agent Richard Bourns signed for Donal Cadden’s Kilbrackan Chacco (Chacco-Blue – Naelle Z) at €35,000 while the GCM Paternships’s Heartbreaker filly (Lot 1) got the sale off to a strong start when selling for €32,000 to Patricia Hurter. Breeder Lisa Cawley was well rewarded for her Grand Slam VDL filly out of Pewit Dezessete (Luidam) when bought by John Kenny for €34,000.
Big supporters of the show through their Northstar Sport Horses, sponsors of all the pony classes, Joan Jacobs was the buyer of Lot 3, Leestone Agakiki, a colt by Aganix du Seigneur from breeder John McKibben. Other buyers included the Aga Khan and Grand Prix hero Jordan Coyle, who signed for Berkleys Farm’s Berkleys Amadeus Blue (Chacco-Blue – MoM’s Arera C) at €25,000. Just one foal - Ciara Phelan’s colt by Chac Boy (Lot 8) was unsold when making €20,000.
At the conclusion of the inaugural sale, Gallagher Dublin Horse Show director Fiona Sheridan said: “We are delighted with the results, particularly to see such strong prices achieved for Irish breeders who supported the sale with real quality. The results give us a strong foundation from which to grow the sale. We will review all aspects of the inaugural event in the coming weeks as we look to develop the sale in partnership with Goffs as a permanent fixture.”
Goffs CEO Henry Beeby added: “It was a privilege for Goffs to conduct the inaugural sale, and wonderful to see such strong results for its first edition. The setting of the Laya Arena was spectacular, particularly after the Nations’ Cup.”