THE majority of winning Irish trainers and jockeys at the recent Cheltenham Festival were members of Pony Clubs, learned their skills on the hunting field or went pony racing, but Rachael Blackmore did all three - and more.

The Co Tipperary native was a very successful rider in the show ring, particularly in working hunter pony classes, and competed with Eventing Ireland for four seasons. Rachael wrote her name into the Cheltenham history books yet again this year, when becoming the first female jockey to win the Grade 1 Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase on Captain Guinness on the Wednesday. She started the four-day meeting on a winning note by landing the opening race at the Festival, the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle (Grade 1), on Slade Steel, who was led up by former pony show jumper, Jack Kelly. Both horses are trained by Henry de Bromhead.

Joseph O’Brien, who saddled the J.J. Slevin-ridden Lark In The Mornin to land the Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle (Premier Handicap) on the Tuesday, represented Ireland in two European Pony eventing championships. On the second occasion, at Moorsele in Belgium in the summer of 2009, O’Brien won an individual bronze medal on Ice Cool Bailey. He last evented in September that year, moving into flat racing, where he shared the apprentice title in 2010 and went on to be champion jockey three times.

Show jumping

Rachael Blackmore did a small amount of affiliated show jumping when she was young, unlike Emmet Mullins, trainer of Tuesday’s Maureen Mullins National Hunt Amateur Jockeys’ Novices’ Chase (Grade 2) winner Corbetts Cross, who jumped at Dublin for four years (2002 to 2004 and 2006). One of the many ponies he rode was Jackie Mullins’ What A Puzzle, who was then passed on to Jackie’s son, Patrick. The last-named partnered Jasmin De Vaux to victory in the Weatherbys Champion Bumper on the Wednesday to give his father Willie his 100th Festival success.

The winning French-bred gelding, who scored by one and three-quarter lengths in the colours of Simor Munir and Isaac Souede, started his racing career with former international event rider, Stuart Crawford. The 2019 Tirwanako gelding only ran once out of Crawford’s Larne yard, winning a four-year-old geldings’ point-to-point maiden in April 2023 at Loughanmore, where he was ridden by Crawford’s brother Ben, who also competed in international events.

Loughanmore was also called to mind following the success in Wednesday’s opener, the Grade 1 Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle, of the Willie Mullins-trained, Paul Townend-ridden Ballyburn.

That six-year-old Flemensfirth gelding, who won by 13 lengths, was once trained at the Co Antrim estate by Colin McKeever for landowner Wilson Dennison, whose black and white quartered colours he carried to victory in a four-year-old geldings’ maiden in October 2022. The bay was ridden that day by Cormac Abernethy. Ballyburn is now owned by Scotland’s Ronnie Bartlett, whose Mark Kyle-ridden Coolio represented Ireland at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, and David Manasseh.

Limerick Lace and Keith Donoghue with Caragh Monaghan after winnng the Mrs Paddy Power Mares' Chase \ Healy Racing

Fun and Games

Before she led up the J.P. McManus-owned, Derek O’Connor-ridden and Gavin Cromwell-trained Inothewayurthinkin to win the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Amateur Jockeys’ Handicap Chase on the Thursday and before she became a professional jockey (riding for Cromwell and Ian Donoghue) and even before she was on Meath’s All-Ireland-winning panel in 2022, Caragh Monaghan represented the Meath Pony Club in mounted games at the Dublin Horse Show.

Cromwell had a second winner at the Festival when the J.P. McManus-owned Limerick Lace landed Friday’s Grade 2 Mrs Paddy Power Mares’ Chase by three-quarters of a length from the same owner’s Dinoblue. A seven-year-old mare by Walk In The Park, Limerick Lace was ridden to victory by Keith Donoghue who, like Cromwell, has a close association with the Ward Union Staghounds.

Over the week, ever present when Willie Mullins had a winner – or seen saddling up runners for the Closutton maestro – was North of Ireland bloodstock agent Harold Kirk, who represented Ireland at junior and senior level in show jumping. The Festival’s leading jockey, Paul Townend, did a small amount of affiliated pony show jumping – and pony showing we think – before going pony racing.