KILLARNEY plays host to a couple of summer blacktype National Hunt races, and this weekend I am taking a brief look at the listed chase winner Stealthy Tom and the listed hurdle winner Shecouldbeanything.

By my reckoning, Stealthy Tom is blacktype winner number 33 over jumps for Yeats (Sadler’s Wells), and they come from nine crops aged four-year-olds and upwards. He is also sire of a Group 2 winner and three listed winners on the flat. His best flat performers were all from his first three crops.

A winner from the age of two until he was eight, Yeats won a total of 15 races, and at Group 1 level they consisted of four Ascot Gold Cups, The Irish Field St Leger, the Coronation Cup, and the Prix Royal Oak.

Stealthy Tom is the second big race winner among five successful offspring of the Be My Native (Our Native) mare Hi Native. She never raced, having been sold as a foal for IR£9,500 as a foal, but JP McManus acquired her for 115,000gns as a six-year-old. Four of her five winners have been trained by Enda Bolger, including Stealthy Tom, and the best of these was Gilgamboa (Westerner).

A nine-time winner, Gilgamboa won the Grade 1 Powers Gold Cup at Fairyhouse, thus keeping up a great family tradition as this is one of the more successful female lines in the National Hunt sphere. Hi Native had three winning siblings, the best of which was her full-brother Native Upmanship (Be My Native).

Shecouldbeanything

Hats off to Michael Barry. Twice this year he has purchased sons of the unraced Culmore Girl (Chevalier), and benefited from subsequent wins for their half-sister.

In February, at Tattersalls Ireland, Barry spent €8,500 on a newly-turned yearling colt by Court Cave (Sadler’s Wells), and at the time the colt’s half-sister Shecouldbeanything (Malinas) was a point-to-point, bumper and maiden hurdle winner, with some blacktype over hurdles. Between then and the Goffs Arkle Sale, where Barry purchased their three-year-old Sholokhov (Sadler’s Wells) half-brother for only €7,000, Shecouldbeanything had won listed hurdle races at Punchestown and Killarney.

Last week, the Gordon Elliott-trained six-year-old mare, who cost connections £68,000 some 16 months ago, won another listed hurdle race in Killarney, and she is most certainly living up to her name. For now, Elliott seems keen to keep her at listed level and she could head for another similar race at Gowran next month.

Shecouldbeanything is the first winner but second foal out of her dam, and Culmore Girl is herself a daughter of Best Wait (Insan). That mare ran 57 times, won five times, and her many placed efforts saw her gain a single piece of blacktype, finishing third of five in the Grade 1 Royal Bond Novice Hurdle. She was not such a success at stud and bred just a single winner from seven foals.