IT was Raheenmore Stud owner Richard Woodroofe who once said, when describing his Wicklow catchment area: “If you go a couple of miles east, you’re in the Irish Sea - there’s not many mares out there!”
Crossing westwards to the Banner County brings you to Kilkee on the edge of the Wild Atlantic Way. This west Clare hinterland has produced some of the best mares, performers and renowned horsemen, including Stephen Russell, who delves into great names of the past and shares his frank views on the future.
Stephen started his stallion-owning apprenticeship early. “I was 16 years of age when I started working with Kilkee vet Paddy Nolan, he was years ahead of his time. There was no thoroughbred horse in the vicinity at the time, so he went looking for one.”
Having heard about a horse in England named Jab, who ironically had been turned down at the Hunter Improvement Society grading, the deal was done to secure a thoroughbred horse for west Clare.
“We headed off at five o’clock in the morning to collect him at the North Wall in Dublin, it was on a Good Friday in 1963 and there wasn’t a place open to get a bite to eat all day.”
Finding out about modern warmblood foundation sires is simple in this internet age. Finding out about Irish greats often relies on the opinions and memories of the encyclopaedic knowledge of the horsemen featured in this series, and Stephen is no exception when it comes to filling in the gaps about Jab.
THE JAB LEGACY
“He was a beautiful French-bred horse. We had great Draught mares at that time and this horse really clicked with them, he suited the Draught mares in Clare. He put more quality into the horse and they were great movers. Jab made west Clare at the time.”
Amongst the world-class show jumpers produced by him were Rodrigo Pessoa’s Valkenswaard Derby winner Punjab (Jab was also the damsire of another Pessoa star in Lora Piano Tomboy, by Coevers), and Edenvale, ridden by USA star Bernie Traurig at the 1982 world show jumping championships in Dublin. “Edenvale was bred by Johnson Hedigan outside Kilrush and sold through the Costellos,” Russell added.
“Jab came in 1963, just before the little grey tractor was coming in and when people got four and five hundred pounds for a horse. The good price was the downfall of the horse because then they started to be replaced by what they bought. Jab set up many a man in west Clare,” he recalls about profitable times when the sale of a good three-year-old could buy a new Massey Ferguson 165.
The stallion man laments the loss of the type (“the handy little mare around 15.3”) and quality of mares found then, saying: “There were often 10 or 12 mares waiting there in the yard and you could hold a show with them.”
On “the Irish Draught - a breed or a type?” debate, Stephen is firmly on the side of it being a type and one that varied around the countryside. “You had a type of Draught in west Clare that you didn’t have in Roscommon or elsewhere in the country, where there may be stronger Draught blood. I’d often hear ‘never go to Galway or Kerry for a mare’. She [the west Clare mare] had to have enough quality to do everything, from working in the field, going to the creamery or hunting, and on Sunday pulling the trap. She had to be sound to do all that, she had to be a real dual-purpose mare. I really believe that.”
Although the days of mares ploughing in the fields seem archaic to some, Stephen is convinced it was the best form of performance testing. “We always knew where the right good mare was. She was really tested at the time and your family depended on her to be sound.
“Nobody wanted a foal off a mare that was poor to plough. The mares were very fertile then, a man walking after those mares for five hours in a field knew his mares. There was no vetting, no scanning but they went in foal.”
Jab proved so popular he covered 158 mares in his first year and because of his popularity, wily customers often passed off horses as being by him or other popular stallions of their time. “A big disadvantage then was the lack of traceability. Everyone wanted one by the top stallions, so there was nothing to say that a horse was by what he was said to be.”
LEAPY LAD
The Banner man is invaluable in filling in some of the missing pieces about the background of the MHS Going Global of the early 1980s: Leapy Lad. “Michael Griffin in Ballynacally bred him [Leapy Lad], he was by Coevers out of a Golden Plover dam.
“I happened to be there when he was sold as a foal in Kilrush Fair and I happened to be there when he was sold as a three-year-old in Ballinasloe to the north. He lunged him there and you want to see that horse jump! And then I happened to be in Dublin the day he won the Guinness championship.”
Ridden on the Irish team in the 1984 Aga Khan Nations Cup by George Stewart, Leapy Lad was sold the following year to American rider Jay Land for £250,000, a phenomenal sum at the time. One of several top Irish-breds on the US circuit then - Mill Pearl was a contemporary - Leapy Lad returned to Dublin in 1986 on the American Nations Cup team.
Another proud horse show week moment for the horse’s fans was his Grand Prix second place to Rockbarton and Capt. Gerry Mullins. Major wins on the home circuit included multiple $100,000 Grand Prix classes and the 1987 Hampton Classic, while the pair finished 12th in the 1986 World Cup final.
Although Stephen may have watched these Clare-breds from the Dublin sidelines, he too had his day in the main arena when he won the banks race. Tarat (a pure Irish Draught by Tara) was brought to Dublin from Kilkee in an open-topped cattle lorry and lodged at Iris Kellet’s yard on Mepsil Road.
“You jumped the first bank, then you met the single bank, jump straight off it again, go round again, then the double bank was right in front of the stands and the last jump was the railway gates.”
Tarat’s owner turned down a good sum for her from a prospective Scottish buyer. “He was offered £6,500 for her. That was 1964, you’d buy a farm of land for it. Another local had bought 70 acres for £3,000 back then but the owner never sold her, he mustn’t want the money.”
FAIR TRADE
There was plenty of dealing however at Kilrush fair, then held four times a year on March 25th, June 1st, October 10th and November 23rd.
“For the March fair in the 1970s, there’d be 10, 20, 30 three-year-olds and you’d have buyers like Mick Connors, Marshall Parkhill, another great judge, Hugh Dunlop and Frank Kernan, two more gentlemen. All you’d be asked for vetting a horse then is a gallop up in the field and if Mick bought them, the horses would be on the train to Waterford from Ennis.”
The Army horse Castlepark was a Frank Kernan find at Kilrush and Nuzum Tarmacadam, the Coevers horse ridden by Con Power, was another bred in west Clare by P.J. Kelly.
Another lucky buy at a different fair was Little Black Magic, one of the country’s top jumping ponies, whose pilots included Andrew Bourns. “The lads wanted a pony so we went to Ballinasloe, couldn’t find one all day Sunday. We went back again on Monday, went up to the car to drink a cup of tea and when we came back there was this pony standing up inside and I said ‘There’s our pony’.
“The Cotters were only after arriving, they broke down coming up from Cork. We broke him and he turned out to be a lovely pony, he won everything there was to be won.”
After Jab came Samiel. “He was bought outside Limerick, a mile or two out the Cork road. John Daly had broken and trained him as a two-year-old and I said the day Paddy bought him, ‘we’ll win the Croker Cup’. You could say they were my own, those horses, because I thought that much of them.”
Although Samiel did indeed win the 1979 Croker Cup championship, he didn’t prove quite as popular as when his predecessor Jab held court. “What killed Samiel was he came after Jab. The Clare lads were mad into show horses and he produced a different kind. Samiel got the winner of the Young Irelander from his first crop.
“Paul Darragh had another by him and he’s the sire of the good event horse stallion in England, Mill Law.”
CROKER CUP DOUBLE
Limerick Show also has a Croker Cup, awarded to its champion broodmare. Stephen won another Croker Cup with Thomond Ruth.
Her sire was Samiel and that remarkable double of one Croker Cup champion producing another is one of his favourite memories.
An advert in The Irish Field led to the next stallion. “I’d been in England trying to find one, then I saw the advert for this colt, so went up to Summerhill in February. Meath was covered in snow that day. He had won a couple of races, then got injured so they roughed him off. I said to the bossman he’s the best of what I’ve seen,” says his apprentice, explaining how Triggerero came to west Clare.
“The inspections were coming up in Crecora but we only had him a fortnight. William Woodroofe was on the panel, they didn’t want to pass him because the horse was still so poor, but Mr Woodroofe said: ‘Don’t worry, by the time this horse is in Dublin you won’t know him’.
“He didn’t win Dublin but he turned inside out and one of the first up to the box afterwards to remark on the difference was William Woodroofe.”
Stephen later did his time as a stallion inspector, recalling the late Capt, Ronnie McMahon “another gentleman” in particular.
Triggerero was later sold to Susan Malee and left behind Tarmon Queen, who was fourth in the Breeders Championship, and Corrib Eva. She won nine times in a row for the Russell family in 1988 and was only beaten once, at Dublin where she was sold, and continued to win for her next owners Philip Scott and Margaret Jeffares.
From his Mayo years, Triggerero produced Calendar Girl, the future dam of Rio bronze medallist horse and Badminton winner, Paulank Brockagh. Maurice Cassidy’s 2010 WEG contender The Jump Jet was another to feature Triggerero as a damsire, yet Stevie maintains he wasn’t as popular as his other thoroughbreds.
“He wasn’t fashionable enough. The foal must look like a show animal and they [Triggerero foals] wouldn’t look good enough for the foal buyers.”
Branching out on his own, he set up Atlantic Stud and bought the thoroughbred stallion Silverado to cater for members of the then newly-set up west Clare Breeders, sadly no longer in operation. Then, in a change from their resident thoroughbreds, Welcome Diamond was added to the team.
“He was a real success story, a quality Irish Draught. He was by Diamond Lad and got 105 mares in his first year.”
When Big Sink Hope arrived he moved on. “He wasn’t getting justice when Big Sink Hope was around, so John McCarthy was looking for a horse,” he said, explaining the future Dublin champion’s move to west Cork.
‘BIG’
Of all their stallions, ‘Big’ was the one to put Atlantic Stud on the map. “Bullers had him and somebody told me one day there was a horse in the north that would suit you.
“So myself, Michael Griffin and Michael Kelly went up. The minute I saw him, I said I had to have him. He was terribly well-bred, beautiful eye, 17hh and all quality.”
1994 was Big Sink Hope’s first season with the Russells and he proved phenomenally successful as a show horse sire. Stevie lists the countless Dublin champions produced by ‘Big’, including Kyleowen, owned by John Donaghy, and Laidlaw Cup champion Playboy, bought instead of a motorbike by young John Hayes.
The Frances Cash-produced champion Cashmere, then the full-brothers Shannon Beau and Bow River, bred by the Donnellan brothers, and the Leonard family’s working hunter champion Ballingowan Reliance were more of his Dublin winners.
Big Sink Hope had an exceptional success rate for producing the winning mare in the Breeders Championship, including Dessie Gibson’s Hillside Amazing Grace, the Dineen brothers’ Kilshinihan Lass and the Roche family’s Assagart My Only Hope.
Although his owner felt the blueblood “was never meant to be in west Clare”, his customers were no doubt glad that he stood there. “They’d nearly have the foals bought before they arrived. Stanley Mateer, the Lord have mercy on him, was a great customer,” said Stephen, recalling the golden days at the height of the stallion’s popularity.
Although Big Sink Hope produced one national Grand Prix horse in Mervyn Clarke’s The Big Boy, he is candid about their success under saddle.
“There was only one thing I regret about him, they didn’t ride on, they were hardy. District Court was nearly the best,” he said, recalling the Royal Highland and Balmoral champion hunter, owned by Harry Rodgers.
“I bought him [District Court] from Terence O’Brien in Miltown Malbay as a foal and had four people lined up to buy him the night before Kilydsart Show. Caroline Berry bought him.”
With his next stallion Riyalan, bought out of the 2004 Goffs Horses In Training sale, Stephen brought the Croker Cup back to west Clare in 2006, another proud moment.
Another family involved in a Croker Cup double was the Woodroofes, who won with Blue Laser and Colourfield. While the late Matthew Woodroofe’s son Richard now concentrates on his successful haylage business, another sign of the times, Stephen continues to stand a stallion in an increasingly tough market.
He has a high opinion of the current stallion Rehy High Society, by Harlequin Du Carel, who is already throwing quality types. “I think a lot of him. Looks don’t always win races but if you had a good looking horse you’d always sell him. It’s getting harder though.”
REHY BRAND
Other Rehy-prefix flag bearers include Rehy USA, bought as a foal at Ballinasloe by Stephen, and winner of the British Eventing seven-year-old championships, and the three-star eventer Rehy Lux, competed stateside by Leslie Law.
Kilcannon High Society, Johnny Long and Carla 09 are just some more of the Dublin winners to have passed through his yard and he is currently breaking in another commercial cob.
Widely acknowledged as gifted at breaking in young horses, he had this to say about future production and the lack of ‘nagsmen’: “I think the farmer-breeder and the small man is finished. Horses have to be so rideable now but who’s going to do it?
“There was always three or four young fellows in every parish that could break and make a horse, ride them around, hunt them but who’s going to do it in 10 or 15 years’ time? Where’s it going to finish up? I feel strongly about this. Michael Pender, the Duffys, they’re all abroad. We’ll have no shows because the riders won’t be there.
“99% of people breeding are losing money, we’re all losing money.
“I went down to the Goresbridge May Sales in 1990 with two Triggereros, a filly and a gelding, and got £10,200 for the pair. I bought a plot of turf, put aluminium windows in the house, bought a two-year-old and still had change out of it!”
He is just as frank about the future. “The show scene is gone and since the day we started lunging our horses, we devalued our horses. The whole lot has changed, you have different people in now.
“We’re talking now about the good times, with horsemen and horsewoman. They were men of principle and they came along and paid [stud fees]. Now the horse has to be sold before you’d get paid. The men of principle are gone.”
Thought-provoking stuff from the Banner man.