THE six-year-old world champion Columbcille Gipsy was sold for €700,000 at the PSI Auction in Germany last Sunday, making her one of the most expensive Irish Sport Horse’s ever sold at public auction.

“It is an amazing achievement from a small little country like Ireland to go to one of the top sales in Germany and have the top price for a show jumping mare,” co-owner Ger O’Neill told The Irish Field.

The mare by Toulon, who was bred by Eamonn Murphy in Co Kilkenny, was ridden to gold medal glory at the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses in Lanaken last September by O’Neill.

With O’Neill in the saddle, Columbcille Gipsy also won the lucrative Irish Breeders Classic final in Barnadown the same month. She was sold on Sunday to the Houston family in Germany, where she will be aimed at the top level of the sport.

Columbcille Gipsy is out of the Grundyman-sired Gipsy III, who Murphy bought in Holland when she was a 16-year-old. The Kilkenny breeder has a two-year-old full-sister to the champion mare, as well as a promising four-year-old, Columbcille Don, by his own stallion Dondoctro Ryal K.

FAMILY

The owners had planned on taking embryos from the mare before she was sold. “It all happened a bit fast so we didn’t get a chance to take any embryos but we have her full-sister and she will go into the breeding programme to keep the line going,” O’Neill said.

Two other show jumping horses were knocked down for the same top price of €700,000 at the 38th PSI Auction, while the top overall price at the prestigious sale was €850,000 for a four-year-old dressage stallion, Zum Gluck.

Forty seven horses were sold at the auction, for a total sum of €14.6 million.

Records were broken in 2015 when Dougie Douglas (Douglas x High Roller) became the most expensive Irish Sport Horse ever to be sold at public auction when he was knocked down for €1.4 million to American show jumper Katie Dinan at the Goresbridge Supreme Sale of Showjumpers.

Greg Broderick’s 2013 five-year-old world champion Arraghbeg Clover made headlines when she was sold for €400,000 at Holger Hetzel’s sale in Germany, while the 2016 six-year-old world champion Killossery Kaiden made €250,000 at last year’s Goresbridge supreme sale.