Broodmare classes

SATURDAY morning’s broodmare classes see the return of several previous winners, including the reigning champion and reserve: Paul Cleary’s Porsch grey Lady Fassagh and Patrick Wafer’s Parkmore Evita. The latter, by Ghareeb, a name that frequently crops up as the winning sire in these classes, won the Coote Cup, awarded to the broodmare champion, in 2017.

Slotting in between those two years is Yvonne Pearson’s 2018 champion Kief Queen B. As with Parkmore Evita and Margaret & Des Jeffares’s Notalot, Pearson’s Munther mare will also line out in The Irish Field Breeders Championship the previous day. Notalot, entered in the opening class where she placed second on her 2019 outing, had a clean sweep at Dublin as a three-year-old.

Another former Coote Cup champion/Breeders Championship finalist is John Burchill’s Slatequarry Sasha, owned by Paula Howard when this Ghareeb bay won in 2016. Reserve champion that year was John Roche’s Assagart Mistress (Kings Mistress). She returns alongside two more stable companions in Assagart Fairytale and Assagart Velvet, by Coroner and Colin Diamond respectively.

One other confirmed entry is Eoin Jennings’s Gairdín Mór Spirit, a good winner on the Munster circuit this summer, who takes her place in the opening middle/heavyweight mare class. By the 2004 Croker Cup champion Spirit House, her filly foal, by another Croker winner in the late Watermill Swatch, is entered in the lucrative €3,000 thoroughbred-sired foal class.

Another entry in this class is William and Aidan Williamson’s colt by the now-exported Jack The Robin. His dam Ballard Jewel is a full-sister to three RDS young horse winners.

More mares with dual Breeders Championship/Saturday morning entries are Derry Rothwell’s Financial Reward mare Greenhall Pushbutton, the reserve supreme champion hunter at Dublin in 2019. She has qualified for this year’s Breeders Championship too, as has Danielle Cusack’s Hallowberry Destiny, by Ramiro B, the winning mare in the 2018 The Irish Field Breeders Championship.

Another Cusack entry is her Spirit House-sired Ballydurn Taylor in the stinted broodmare class. This often proves to be an interesting class and three more entries with Dublin form are Lisa Comiskey Donnelly’s Watchhouse High Hopes, Thomas Conlon’s Lisbrogan Gold and Paddy and Richard Gildea’s Miss Cranny Lancelot.

Watchhouse High Hopes had a near-clean sweep in 2019, including the two-year-old and filly championship and the Financial Reward mare is now in foal to Democrat. Lisbrogan Gold, by Leprince des Bois and in foal to Tyson, was another Dublin winning two-year-old Dublin and reserve champion filly in 2018, while the Lancelot-sired Miss Cranny Lancelot was well-placed in the 2018 lightweight mare class.

The broodmare and foal classes start on Saturday at 9am and will be sponsored by Plusvital, supported by HSI. Jane Holderness-Roddam and John Newborough are this year’s judges.