Days of Sunshine part 2 cont/d...

Ending another fascinating day, we headed off for Innistioge in Co Kilkenny where we were staying in the village pub, ready to visit Cullintra Stud the following morning. We had an excellent meal in the village with Paul Doherty, who with his brother Gary has been successfully breeding sport horses under the name of Ballyshan Horses, and who has been an outstanding guide on this and previous visits.

Day Three  

Our final stud visit was to Cullintra Stud at The Rower, which Peadar Murphy runs with his wife Nadine, herself an eventer. The star of the show at Cullintra is the Holstein stallion Capitalist, who still at the age of 19 is looking outstandingly well and has oodles of charisma! His breeding is extremely interesting – he is by the legendary stallion Capitol I, and his damsire is Sacramento Song XX. Ramzes AA appears twice on the top and bottom line of Capitol’s pedigree, 3 generations back, and Manometer XX is on both the top and bottom line of Capitalist’s pedigree, 4 generations back. So some interesting line breeding! Capitalist himself has had a successful competition career, having won and been placed in national and international GPs, and sired some international jumping horses, including Campino, who was placed 3rd in the 5* GP at Spruce Meadows.

Capitalist

Capitalist is a 16.3hh long-lined athletic stallion, with powerful hindquarters and an outstandingly pretty head and elegant line of neck, and floating ground-covering paces. The youngstock of his that we saw at Cullintra seem to have inherited his stamp, and although its early days to judge, it looks like he will be making an extremely valuable contribution to showjumping bloodlines in Ireland.

Peadar with one of his broodmares for sale

Peadar showed us several very nice broodmares that he had for sale, and a Master Imp mare (who may also be for sale) belonging to Jack Murphy, the owner of the legendary and sadly recently deceased stallion Golden River.

A woolly Capitalist foal out in the field

Finally and reluctantly we left Cullintra to drive down to Cork Airport for the return trip home. It had been a wonderful and memorable visit, with an amazing amount of stunning horseflesh packed into 3 days, lots of good craic, and many people and places that we would like to return to. As we flew out of Cork and the plane banked over the Irish Sea (much to Fiona’s alarm, as her little blue pill had not yet taken effect), in the distance we thought that we glimpsed a rainbow ......

Ginny Smith and Amanda Bliss

Links :
Lissava Stud : http://www.lissavastud.com/studfarmireland_home.php
Ballyshan Horses : http://www.ballyshanhorses.webs.com/
Cullintra Stud : http://www.irishhorseworld.com/
For further background on Capitalist : http://www.stallhell.de/?p=capitalist-eng