IF you were at the race meeting in Listowel last Friday, or watched it on Racing TV or, as Gaeilge, on TG4, you couldn’t help smiling at a beaming Orla Queally as she rode back to the winner’s enclosure following her first track success in the MCG Ladies Handicap Hurdle.

Orla was on board the 9/2 shot Costanuci who is trained by her father John and owned by her mother Miriam.

She and the nine-year-old Doyen mare held on to score by half a length from the 5/4 favourite Who’s Da Goose who was partnered by Jody Townend, the multiple champion lady amateur jockey.

The two riders are, of course, also well-known on the show jumping scene and both were in action over the coloured poles on Saturday. Townend stayed closer to home and jumped three horses at the Tipperary Equestrian Centre while Queally travelled up to Emerald where she and her mother’s Irish Sport Horse mare Cillbhrid Millie, a daughter of Andiamo Semilly, were among the 30 who divided first place in the DAFM five-year-old series.

Orla, who has other young horses to jump for the winter, most being produced in partnership with Paddy O’Donnell, is down in higher graded horse power. At the start of Listowel week, she bid adieu to the OBOS Quality 004 Kilnamac Maud on whom she competed in the British Speed Derby at Hickstead in June while she probably won’t compete her 1.45m jumper Gentleman Time until next spring.

Back to the racing scene. Orla had been sharing the mount on Costanuci with her 21-year-old brother Sean but, as he recently joined the Jonjo O’Neill yard in England as an amateur, she should have the mount on the bay to herself for the foreseeable future and also on the yard’s open point-to-point horse Pat Coyne on whom both she and Sean recorded their first success between the flags.

Orla, who competed in Minimus and Tetrathlon as a member of the Waterford Branch of the Pony Club, holds an Honours Business Degree and completed the prestigious Irish National Stud Course in 2023. In early 2025, she joined Plusvital where she is marketing manager.