SAINT Patrick’s Day… when the beer and Chicago River run green, the Irish roar at Cheltenham cranks up and millions around the globe celebrate their Irish heritage, be it real or a 24-hour pass.

Irish horses and ponies may brace themselves too as proud owners around the world dress them up next Thursday in a multitude of emerald green accessories for the ‘Insta shot’.

What’s the history behind the multi-million dollar St Patricks Day industry?

As Irish schoolchildren learnt in the classroom, St Patrick was the 5th-century missionary who was kidnapped and brought to Ireland from either Scotland or Wales, to herd sheep on Mount Slemish in Co. Antrim. He escaped as a stowaway on a boat to England but later returned as a priest to spread Christianity.

Legend tells us that he banished snakes from Ireland, the shamrock was his prop for teaching the Holy Trinity concept and that he was buried in Downpatrick after his death on March 17th, 461 A.D.

Horses were present in Ireland long before St. Patrick’s arrival. The earliest proof of their existence here is from bones, believed to date from the Early Bronze Age (around 2,400 B.C), found at Newgrange in Co. Meath.

While there’s few anecdotes or records linking St Patrick to horses in his lifetime, there are nods galore to Ireland’s patron saint in the horse world since.

Did you know?

  • According to the IHR Online database, Shamrock was an Irish Draught stallion from the Young Arthur line and was foaled in 1912. Another entry shows that one of the ‘millennium babies’, foaled in 2000, was a donkey named Patrick.
  • St Patrick (1817–1843) was the St Leger winner in 1820. Unbeaten as a three-year-old, he won the Doncaster Gold Cup the following year. Two centuries later, he was followed in the ‘Name Stakes’ by St Patrick’s Day, a full-brother to the 2015 American Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. Trained as a two-year-old by Bob Baffert, St Patrick’s Day moved to Ireland the following year where he placed twice in six starts for trainer Aidan O’Brien. He retired to stud at Journeyman Stud in Ocala, Florida at a fee of $5,000.
  • There are more St. Patrick’s Day-themed names than the patron saint himself could shake a crozier at but two of the more interesting ones are Leprechaun, a winner of one race in South Africa and the cleverly named Pot Of Gold, by Rainbow Quest, trained by Dermot Weld.
  • St Patrick’s Blue was the colour originally worn on the feast day before green became more popular. With their green jackets, Irish riders are instantly recognisable around the world.
  • The expression ‘rub of the green’, whilst often used in many sports, is a golfing term. The real meaning involved a golf ball in play being deflected along the ‘green’ of the golf course.
  • A sprig of shamrock and the ‘luck of the Irish’ were involved in Arkle’s Cheltenham Gold Cup treble in 1966. By then, the Duchess of Westminster’s chaser was a national treasure, as this Irish Times article eulogised: “The horse is very close to the heart of the nation. He has again and again confirmed his supremacy over all rivals in Britain. Every time he appears on an English racecourse he raises the morale at home. He is so emphatically the best. He even looks as if he knows he is the best. Not with the air of swagger and self-glory which characterizes, say Mr Cassius Clay; but with the dignity, the look of supreme self-assurance that marks President De Gaulle.”
  • Not even the fighting qualities of boxing legend Mohammed Ali (as Cassius Clay changed his name to) or French elan could prevent Arkle from clouting a fence on the first circuit in that year’s Gold Cup. His recovery is attributed to the sprig of shamrock, knotted into the horse’s browband that St Patrick’s Day by his groom Johnny Lumley. Arkle went on to saunter home, 30 lengths clear of his nearest rival Dormant, thereby completing a Gold Cup treble for jockey Pat Taaffe and trainer Tom Dreaper.
  • St Patrick’s Day falls this year on the Thursday of Cheltenham’s racecard when the third day’s feature races include the Ryanair Chase. This year’s Green Room hospitality package at Prestbury Park includes a Q&A session with Sir Anthony McCoy OBE and Jonjo O’Neill Jr.
  • Nick Bull may have felt he was in action at Prestbury Park when Shamrock, an ex-racehorse he was hacking out on, bolted along country laneways before unseating his jockey. Thankfully neither were injured and the “Whoa Shamrock!” video, captured on Nick’s GoPro camera, has been viewed 3.5 million times on YouTube since 2017.
  • The Aer Lingus fleet, with its trademark shamrock logo, will fly thousands of Irish passengers over the St Patrick’s Day holiday week, to both Cheltenham and for overdue family reunions as Covid travel restrictions ease.
  • Each year, Britain’s royal family members – such as the Princess Royal and Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - present shamrocks to the 1st Battalion Irish Guards on Saint Patrick’s Day. The ceremony includes a parade by the battalion, headed by Domhnall, their Irish Wolfhound mascot.
  • The American Connemara Pony Society (ACPS) presents Golden Shamrock awards to any of the native breed that obtains five Gold Medals or Awards of Excellence in the dressage, in-hand, eventing, hunter, jumper, Pony Club, therapeutic riding and/or foxhunting fields.
  • Shamrock quarter markings have adorned the rumps of such Irish-breds as Sam Watson’s Horseware Bushman and Sarah Ennis’s Horseware Woodcourt Garrison in eventing, plus Judy Reynolds’ dressage star Vancouver K.
  • That west Canadian city is where Galway man William Donnellan turned heads last year on St. Patrick’s Day when he dressed up as a leprechaun on St Patrick’s Day last year and rode his horse McGregor along Vancouver’s West End beach. Donnellan is the owner of Donnellan’s Irish Pub and ... what else ... the Shamrock Bar & Grill.
  • Further down the West Coast, another Irish immigrant, Robbie Fallon, set up his successful Shamrock Moving & Storage Inc. company in San Francisco. During his stay there, the Cashel Bay Connemaras owner was also involved with the annual St Patrick’s Day parade, usually held on the Sunday before March 17th. According to the U.S. Census Bureau records, 32.7 million Americans, or 10% of its population, regard themselves as being of Irish ancestry, (Germans are the largest ancestry group in the United States). “Everybody wants to be Irish that day! Connemara ponies came from a 500-mile radius to take part in the parade,” Robbie recalled.
  • Boston, Chicago and New York are the three main St Patrick’s Day parades in the United States, although the first parade of its kind there was held in St. Augustine in Florida in 1601.
  • Then-Minister for Rural and Community Development Michael Ring, champion of the Irish showrings after introducing funding for the country’s agricultural shows during his term of office, was one of the guests at the Chicago parade in 2019.
  • Five years ago, Meath side-saddle supremo and dual world record holder Susan Oakes took part in the Boston parade. In minus 15 degree temperatures, she was on board a Connemara mare Tower Hill’s Breeze, borrowed from her New Hampshire owner, Sally Oxnard.“Riding side-saddle in the Boston St Patrick’s Day is definitely off my bucket list now! Where better to do it than Boston and I’m glad that I was riding an amazing Connemara with an incredible mind as I’m not sure if any other horse would have handled it so well.”
  • The largest St Patrick’s Day parade in North America is the New York event which travels 1.5 miles up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Normally, around 150,000 participants are immigrants proudly marching behind their county banners, schoolchildren, bagpipe bands, police, firefighters and other municipal workers. In 2002, however, an estimated 300,000 marchers and three million spectators turned out in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the previous year. The entire parade paused and turned to face southwards in the direction of the Twin Towers site for a minute’s silence to honour the victims. The parade was one of the first of the city’s main events to be cancelled due to Covid-19 in 2020. Cancelled again last year, it’s third time lucky for the Big Apple event as the parade returns this year.
  • One of New York’s most iconic stable buildings was the Romanesque Revival-style Claremont Riding Academy, built in 1892. Owner Edward W. Bedell commissioned Claremont Stables, a four-storey carriage and boarding premises on West 89th Street. In 1927, Claremont Stables became a riding school and in December 1943, was taken over by Polish immigrant Irwin J. Novograd, who had worked there as a bookkeeper since the Depression. His son Paul later took over the business but faced with escalating costs, sold up in 2007. Native New Yorkers had riding lessons in Claremont’s bijoux indoor arena, tourists went hacking along Central Park’s bridle paths and you could even hire a horse to join in the St Patrick’s Day parade. For $100, according to the 1993 pricelist in the Claremont brochure which billed it as “An only-in-New York experience.”
  • One of the biggest cheers along the route of the 1999 parade was for the two New York Sanitation Department employees, involved in the clean-up operation as they followed the Claremont Riding Academy group with a brush, shovel and wheelie bin.
  • Irish-born Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara was the parade’s Grand Marshall that year and another lady given that honour in 2018 was Loretta Brennan Glucksman. She was driven in one of the Clinton Park Stables carriages by Dowth-born Stephen Hand and accompanied by her 15-year-old grandson Liam Picco. A native of Allentown, Pennsylvania, the noted philanthropist oversaw contributions of €300 million to various projects during her 18-year term as chairperson of the American Ireland fund. Walking alongside was Conor McHugh, the Leitrim-born manager of Clinton Park Stables where Hand and his horse Samson operated from. “Loretta has given so much of her time and financial gifts for the people of Ireland and for Irish Americans. Her involvement with the island of Ireland has been a continuous series of acts of selflessness,” Hand told The Irish Field that year. “On St. Patrick’s Day, we think of those who came before, what they had to do to survive. I am very thankful for those who went before, who make my life in America so easy.”
  • The honour of blowing the whistle to officially start the St. Patrick’s Day parade that same year belonged to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert ‘Bobby’ Boyce, who retired in 2018 after 35 years’ service.
  • The NYPD’s Mounted Unit, formed in 1858, is another iconic sight during the annual parade. The Unit’s base in the plush surroundings of Mercedes House and nearby Clinton Park Stables in the now-gentrified Hells Kitchen district are two of the last stable buildings in New York.
  • The late Texan-born actor Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi were keen breeders of Egyptian Arabians horses on their New Mexico and California ranches.
  • Closer to home, the Lord Mayor of Dublin’s coach leads the annual St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin. Built in 1791 by William Whitton, the coach with its team of four horses, was in regular use until put into storage in 1932. Restored in 1976, it now appears on ceremonial occasions.
  • Horse-drawn floats and riders on horseback will take part too in the dozens of parades around the country this year and looking further ahead to September, the St Patrick’s Coast Ride is back on the calendar too. Originally organised by a small band of enthusiasts working with the Irish Long Distance Riding Association (ILDRA), the core 32km loop includes open countryside, farmland, disused railway tracks, forest, farm lanes, beaches and part of the original Downpatrick Racecourse, which dates back to 1685. The St Patrick’s Coast International Endurance Ride first ran in April 2014 as a FEI ride featuring one and two-star classes, alongside classes for national and pleasure riders. This year’s event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, September 3rd.

    • Bring on the shamrock numnahs, ‘Irish roar’ and Fifth Avenue parade – St. Patrick’s Day is back.