THE rise through the ranks of Donnchadh Doyle has been something that those watching on from the side lines have to admire, after he sent out his 200th winner at Tinahely on Sunday.

In the nine short years since he sent out his first runner in his own name, the Monbeg Stables handler has become one of the biggest operators on the circuit, sending out no fewer than 82 individual horses in the last completed season in 2018/19, a number only bettered in recent decades by his fellow Wexford native Colin Bowe a season earlier.

Prolific maidens

It is in the four-year-old maidens that Doyle has been most prolific, winning no fewer than 113 races in the age division. It was therefore somewhat appropriate that on the same afternoon as Guily Billy provided him with his milestone winner in the Tinahely four-year-old geldings’ maiden, it was The Big Breakaway, one of his other 112 four-year-old winners that was creating headlines with his emphatic success at Cheltenham.