CASTLEFIELD Breeding Farm, the partnership formed by Ger O’Neill and Italian business man Matteo Delmiglio, will be standing five sport horse stallions for the 2026 breeding season. The roster is headed by the Zangersheide pair of Asca Z (Askari x Carthago) and Solid Gold Z (Stakkato Gold x Calvin Z), whose presence at O’Neill’s Kilkenny base will mean that Irish breeders have access to fresh semen from two proven 1.60m stallions seven days a week.

The latter should already be familiar to some Irish breeders, as he shares the same sire as Seamus Hughes Kennedy’s star performer ESI Rocky, who finished in the top five individually at last year’s Senior European Championships, as well as jumping double clear on the third-placed Irish Aga Khan team. Solid Gold Z was the seven-year-old World Champion at Lanaken in 2018 in his own right, and he went on to have a successful career at the highest level with Christian Ahlmann.

“I always loved watching Solid Gold Z jumping with Christian,” says Ger. “His sire, Stakkato Gold, was one of my favourite sires in the world, but his genetics aren’t that easy to access any more. For that reason, Solid Gold Z was always on our radar and, when the opportunity arose to bring him to Ireland, we couldn’t afford to miss it. We had already used him on our own mares and invested in his progeny, and we have sold one of them, Silvester van’t Ameldonk Z, to America where he is currently jumping at 1.50m level.”

Asca Z is already a sire of sires, with 14 approved stallion sons to date, among them Kieran Kennedy’s Amadeo van het Vossenhof Z (see page 8) and Greg Broderick’s RDS four-year-old winner Abba Van De Vrombautshoeve Z, and nine of his offspring are jumping at 1.60m level. He is also the sire of Phillip Dutton’s Olympic event horse Z, as well as many other event horses competing at CCI2* and CCI3* level. Ger says that he should appeal to breeders from both disciplines, “particularly because he is a modern type and also moves very well”.

Ger attributes the success in establishing this relationship with Zangersheide to his business partner Delmiglio, and says they hope it will be a progressive one, and that eventually all the Zangersheide stallions will be available through Castlefield Breeding Farm. “We were over at their stallion show last weekend,” he says, “and the range of genetics they’re making available to breeders in one stallion station is phenomenal to see.”

Solid Gold Z jumping with Christian Ahlmann \ Sportfot

Commercial stock

Delmiglio is also influential in the make-up of Castlefield Breeding Farm’s stallion roster, as the breeder of Castlefield Kingston (Cinsey x Cascari), an 11-year-old black stallion who has been fully approved by the Irish Sport Horse Studbook. He was on a team which finished second in a Junior Nations Cup at Sentower last year, ridden by Ger’s protégé, then junior rider Jack Kent. “He’s making waves,” says Ger. “His first progeny are five now, and we’re very happy with them. They’ve done very well in some of the Goresbridge select sales and in three-year-old classes, and they’re proving to be very commercial.”

Breeding commercial stock is a point Ger returns to frequently throughout our conversation, and he emphasises this again when discussing Castlefield Kingston and his breeding barn stable mate, Ikannan V G (Kannan VGE x Indoctro). “Rideability is an important attribute, which makes horses commercial for Irish breeders. The higher end of the market is amateur driven, so horses have to have good canters and the correct way of going. These two stallions can be seen out jumping in Ireland any weekend with Jack Kent, so breeders have the opportunity to see these qualities in them for themselves.” Ger makes the same point about vettings and X-rays. “Sound horses shouldn’t be failed on imperfect x-rays, but whether we like it or not, this standard of vetting is here to stay. We have to breed commercial horses, so we need to breed for good X-rays too.”

Commercial appeal is also apparent in the final member of Castlefield’s 2026 sport horse stallion team, as like Asca Z, Durango VDL also boasts successful progeny across the disciplines. He is the sire of several 1.60m show jumpers, as well as Vittoria Panizzon’s Italian team ride DHI Jackpot, with whom she finished 25th individually at last year’s Blenheim European Championships. A dressage horse also makes it into Durango’s 30 best offspring on Horsetelex, with the American-based Milena having recorded good scores up to small tour level. The stallion’s soundness and longevity is proven by his own competition record, and he was still winning at 1.45m as a 16-year-old, despite the demands of his breeding career.

Ger O'Neill and Seamus Hughes Kennedy at the European Championships \ Tomas Holcbecher

Coaching career

It’s fair to say that Ger’s coaching career has grown in tandem with his breeding enterprise and, in the last 10 years, the Castlefield team has won 11 gold medals at youth and young horse championships. He rates his student Seamus Hughes Kennedy’s double clear in the Aga Khan as “a big achievement and the fulfilment of a lifetime goal,” but even talking to me just after returning from a coaching trip to America, he is philosophical about his success.

“Good horses attract good riders,” he says. “Good horses are easier to market and to partner with the right people and, because I have a really good team, we can produce the horses to a really high level. We have been lucky to sell a lot of our horses as eight-year-olds, when they’re very valuable, and that has allowed us to invest in our facilities, but the horses and riders came first. We didn’t have all this at the start!”

Stallion man Joe Sinnott has been looking after the breeding barn for the last four years, while the Castlefield riding team is headed by Jason Foley, who started with Ger at 16 and is still riding for him eight years and numerous team appearances later. He is currently jumping on the Andalucia Sunshine Tour with fellow Castlefield protégé Mia de Bromhead, and among his string out there is the Castlefield Kingston five-year-old mare Castlefield Paris, whom Ger rates highly. Closer to home, Eoghan Fahy and Jack Kent have been following the TRM Spring Tour with enormous success, pulling off a duo of one-two results at the Cavan and Killossery editions.

The O'Neill family: Ava, Ger, Taylor and Ali

Ger is quick to point out that his wife Ali is key to the smooth running of Castlefield and, in recent years, daughters Ava and Taylor have joined the team on the show jumping circuit. Taylor qualified for the final of the 128cm National Championship at the RDS, which takes place in the main arena after the Aga Khan, and Ger described the experience as “a huge buzz for her and for me”. Ava won the 138cm Grand Prix at the England Home Pony International at Southview in November, and her proud father says “there’s a lot of joy and satisfaction in watching them excel”.

Excelling daughters aside, Ger’s proudest moments as a breeder remain the consecutive world breeding championship gold medals, won in 2016 and 2017 by Columbille Gypsy and Uppercourt Cappuccino respectively, but he says: “Any horse we breed and produce who jumps to 1.60m makes us proud and, by now, we have bred too many of them to count.”

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