WITH a 20-year career in banking to her credit, Mary Molloy has a thing for facts and figures. And when it comes to horses, she is a natural there too.

Not everyone could have produced an intricate paper like the one soon to be launched by the Traditional Irish Horse Association (TIHA), such is the immense attention to detail, but for Mary horses, data and graphs are right up her street.

“It all came about when we were formulating our five-year strategic plan. We wanted to provide fact-based evidence of the contribution and value of the Traditional Irish Horse at the highest performance level within the sport and I decided to do so by completing a breeding analysis of our top horses in both show jumping and eventing. I started looking at the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses rankings and I quickly became hooked.”

Several months – and many a sleepless night – later, Mary completed her study on a breed that has been close to her heart all her life.

Mary knows her way around horses, and knows a good one when she sees one. The daughter of a horse breeder producer from Rathnew, Co Wicklow, it was bred into her.

“I grew up in the industry and learned to ride at a very young age,” she noted. For almost 50 years her father Andy Dunne ran a very successful breeding, show jumping and hunt hireling business alongside a dairy farm.

“I have three siblings and we all rode as children and teenagers. We rode lots of horses and ponies, whether it was hunting, show jumping or in Pony Club. The really talented ones went show jumping or eventing after which they were generally sold abroad. Those that were not sold were more often than not used for the hireling business with the Bray Harriers.”

The family-run Ballymerrigan Stud also stood some successful ISH stallions over the years, among them Kilcullen Lad, Young Tutor and the home-bred, The Wren Boy. The latter is the sire of Snipe, who jumped up to Grand Prix level with Olive Clarke before being retired from competition in recent years.

To support a family of six, the hireling business was the main source of income for many years and Mary says that the valuable experience she gained dealing with people during this time set her up for the next phase in her life.

“With the hireling business, we were catering for professional clients from Dublin who would come down to Wicklow hunting. They expected a professional service and to be mounted on an experienced quality horse. We were lucky to have plenty of them and we would ride them ourselves for a few seasons to get in the experience before putting clients up on them.”

While still at school, Mary had her heart set on producing horses for a living. Her parents Andy and Chrissie had other ideas though and talked her into studying business, after which she went to work at National Irish Bank. “I loved horses but within a short time in the bank I got hooked on money instead,” she laughed.

Mary showed a serious aptitude for figures and people leadership skills and soon progressed into management positions.

Mary Molloy compiling her research for the TIHA \ Siobhan English Photography

Climbing the ladder

As a confident young lady in her 20s and 30s, the career ladder was one she was very happy to climb.

Positions ranged from managing sales teams across the east coast to being a private banking manager.

When Danske Bank bought out NIB in 2005, Mary was asked to run one of the new ‘flagship’ branches during the transition period.

Later an opportunity came to work with the Deputy CEO at Danske Bank which saw her reach a high point in her career.

In 2009, after holding several prominent positions in the sector, Mary made the decision to take a career break and put her career in banking on hold temporarily.

In the meantime Mary had married Dermot Molloy, a helicopter winch-man with the Irish Coast Guard. They were living near her family farm and she now had time to ride on a more regular basis. “I had worked hard for years so I was delighted to be around horses again every day.”

After a few years’ break from intense work, Mary considered returning to employment, but those plans were put on ice when their daughter Laragh was born in 2012.

When Laragh was a few months old, Mary resumed riding, but a freak accident in the yard left her with a spiral fracture to her left leg, an injury that put her back on the sidelines for the best part of three years.

While she was recuperating, Mary had time to look at other properties with a view to expanding her horse interests and an opportunity came up to buy a derelict farm outside Ashford. It was very run down but it bordered some family land and had a house which they could renovate, stables and grazing.

“Once we had settled in and I had stocked up on horses, I felt I also needed another focus. That is when I offered my time to the TIHA. I had worked with traditionally bred horses all of my life and I am extremely passionate about them, so it was always going to be a great mix.”

Solid research

Within the first few months of being introduced to the founding members, Mary found herself on the selection panel for the TIHA Hunter Show and Go Sale. “That sale was a great success and afterwards I prepared a sales analysis document.” Council members were impressed with her findings and Mary was asked to come on board officially and as Development Officer for the group.

“I really enjoy working with the TIHA team. They are a great group of people who are passionate about Traditional Irish Horses and the Irish Sport Horse industry as a whole. I admire each and every one of them individually and as a group.

“They are tremendously knowledgeable, hard working and dedicated. They want to make a real difference and get things done. They have made me feel very welcome and it’s easy to work with people like that.

“As a team we had been working on developing a five-year strategic plan and to support our upcoming breeding initiatives, I suggested doing more research and that is how this paper came about.”

Mary initially began studying the WBFSH rankings to identify the top six Irish-bred horses between 2004 and 2020. She then went on to explore their pedigrees further.

“It took off from there. I expected to see a strong presence of TIH in the early years, but when I started to colour-code the dams, the presence of TIH throughout became very clear.”

As for her goal when the findings are shared with the equestrian community, Mary says that one aim would be to show the unappreciated level of TIH breeding in our top horses and change the opinion that ‘traditional horses are a thing of the past’.

“I’m far from anti-foreign horses but if the introduction and dominance of foreign blood within the ISH breed were to be the sole key to our success, we wouldn’t be seeing TIH bloodlines coming through so strongly throughout this paper despite their declining numbers.

“I’m a firm believer in fact, and this research tells a very interesting story,” she concludes.

Influence of TIH bloodlines in high performance shown

(Part 2 of the TIHA research will be in published in next week’s issue).