Breeders’ Championship

Scoring not only her second winning of The Irish Field Breeders’ Championship but also having her 2014 foal, be victorious in the Young Horse Championship, John and Mary Margaret Roche’s superb grey mare Assagart My Only Hope delivered a unique RDS double last Friday.

At the edge of ring one, a punter whispered to me “a good big mare with plenty of Thoroughbred.”

And that in fact agreed with the assessment of German expert judges Jens Meyer and Harm Thormahlen who placed her top of the strongest line in the 33-year history of this iconic mare and foal championship.

Assagart My Only Hope was bred by Gerard Kelly in Kilkee and is by the local Thoroughbred Big Sink Hope out of a mare by the performance Anglo Arab Filice De Champeix. As a nine-year-old, in 2014, she scored her first winning of this Championship with her Castleforbes Lord Lancer colt foal at foot.

This foal, now named Assagart Lord Lancer has grown into a strapping three-year-old, and had Foulksmills native John Roche throw his hat high in the Ballsbridge noontime air when taking the Laidlaw Cup for overall Young Horse Championship.

Roche hardly had time to dust off his bowler before coming back to Ring 1 with Assagart My Only Hope herself and a full brother to the Laidlaw Cup champion to convincingly take her second Breeders title.

Top sire

When interviewed after receiving the Lynn Aldrich Trophy Roche said: “When Lord Lancer did so well for us before we went to him again.”

This sire traces all the way back to the Thoroughbred Ladykiller through Landgraf I. He was successfully ridden for Lady Forbes up to five-star level on the top international circuit by our own Jessica Kurten.

Standing second to My Only Hope was Kildysart owners Brendan and Aidan O’Sullivan with the Lancelot mare Miss Cranny Lancelot that was also bred in Clare by Noel McMahon. Her filly foal is by the Oldenburg sire O.B.O.S. Quality who stands along with Lancelot at the Kennedys in Tralee. Third went to Mary Murphy of Swinford with the Loughehoe Guy 11-year-old Frenchpark Black Beauty out of an Ard Granpa dam. Her filly foal is by the Irish Sport Horse Sligo Candy Boy that went through the HSI inspections at Cavan.

Fourth came a mare that has three Dublin Young Horse Championships to her credit, Ballykelly Notalot by Lancelot with a Diamant de Semilly colt foal. Her owner Margaret Jeffares of Drinagh took the best presentation prize. Derry Rothwell’s Mellenium Cruise by Cruising was fifth and in sixth came Paddy and Richard Gildea of Letterkenny with Grove Hill Heather by the Cruising sire Couger.