THOSE heading to Goresbridge next Wednesday, for the first session of the three-day May sale, should note that there is a significant update to the catalogue entry of Lot 155, Cian McGee’s Carlton Gardens, following Wednesday’s final of the Stepping Stones to Success League at Wexford Equestrian.

Completing on his dressage penalty score of 23.25, the six-year-old Sea The Stars gelding won the Treo Eile thoroughbred to competition horse final and league after which McGee was presented with another Treo Eile rug and his first prize, the €250 awarded by the Irish Horse Welfare Trust for the highest-placed horse with a track or point-to-point record and the €200 which is presented along with the William Codd perpetual trophy for the leading novice horse in the league.

Carlton Gardens ran unplaced in seven races on the flat and six over hurdles, the plug being pulled on his racing career after he finished last of 12 over an extended 10 furlongs at Dundalk in mid-October. Bred in Britain by Wellsummers Farm, the tall chesnut is out of the unraced Dansili mare Raskutani whose has bred seven winners from nine runners including three black-type performers.

“We got the horse a week after his last run and then gave him a little bit of a break,” said Taghmon-based McGee who jointly owns Carlton Gardens with his partner Conor Maher. “When we brought him back in, we got him to relax by doing a lot of hacking around Forth Mountain.

"He’s a smashing sort, with great movement and scope. He did all four qualifying legs of the league, winning three times, and then we had a super day on Wednesday.”

Co Westmeath’s Emily Murphy finished second both in the 10-runner final and league with her unraced five-year-old Harzand mare Lilly Bobtail, the highest-placed open horse in the league, whose four-year-old half-sister by Poet’s Word, Might Be The One, was sold for £60,000 following her second-place finish, on her only run, at Borris in early March.