WHAT do we know about Ballaghmor Class, the Limerick-bred grey? Pedigree database searches found nothing. Ireland is lucky though to have founts of knowledge, such as Philip Scott who knew the complete history of Gormley, the dual Olympic eventer, included in the Irish-bred Olympics eventers article. Bred in Ballina by Jane Gormley, the thoroughbred went back to a Monksfield mare owned and raced by his parents.

Slyguff Stud’s ever-patient Frances and Barbara Hatton continually point me in the right direction for tracking down breeders and are practically custodians of Irish sport horse breeding history.

And then there was Philip Heenan. The first pedigree enquiry meant calling to Ringroe – no mobile phones, email or social media shortcuts then in 1986 – on a bitterly cold January morning and after our usual chitchat, went something like this: “Philip, small bay horse named Viewpoint, won two classes at Olympia. Said to be a Light Brigade, looks like a Clover Hill. Any idea who could have bred him?” “I did!” Magician.

A couple of stallions, belonging to the late Heenan, started floating around in the hunt for Kilderry Place, the dam of Ballaghmor Class. I mentioned this at Charleville last Saturday to Eyleen Nugent, another of his customers, saying that the one man who would have known was the encyclopaediac Philip Heenan. “In an instant.”

What we do know for certain is that Ballaghmor Class is by Courage II, the Holsteiner stallion at Tom Meagher’s Kedrah House Stud. Tom only had the horse for “two and a half seasons” when the horse died of a heart attack but not before he had produced four Olympic event horses – Ballaghmor Class, Cooley Rorkes Drift, Ringwood Sky Boy and The Duke of Cavan - in that short time.

Pensioner’s rate

Here’s what Tom recalls about Kilderry Place. “Noel Hickey and his neighbour John Meade went to a sale to sell a foal. Noel saw a mare that he fancied and John persuaded him to buy it. The mare had just sold a really good-looking foal at the sale but she was not back in foal.

“She didn’t have a passport but it was on the word of the old man who sold her that she was believed to have been Young Convinced xx, I’m a Star xx and a Draught mare. This could not be verified and was never recorded on her passport.

“After they brought the mare home, they rang Willie Kett a local renowned horseman, to pick out a stallion to suit this mare. Willie agreed she was a good-looking athletic mare and he said there was only one horse for her, Courage II.”

Willie was then despatched to Cahir to negotiate a “pensioner’s rate” for Kilderry Place and after much negotiation with Tom, a deal was struck. “And this is how Ballaghmor Class came to be! When the colt foal was born, Willie Kett and Noel Hickey returned with Kilderry Place with Ballaghmor Class, the foal at foot, to be covered again by Courage. Sadly, the mare did not go back in foal and her owner Noel Hickey got ill and unfortunately he had to sell the mare.”

Ballaghmor Class, the last foal of Kilderry Place, did return to Kedrah House Stud when Tom and his wife Magette purchased the weanling. “As a three-year-old, he was produced by Thomas Quiqley of Kellistown Stud at the RDS where he finished in second place in the Future Event Horse class, pipped by a small margin by a mare [Dance With A Stranger] owned by veterinary colleague and friend, Jim Tempany from Sligo.”

Kedrah House Stud sold Ballaghmor Class that autumn at the special event horse sale at Tattersalls to Katherine Charlton and Judy Tobin. The rest of the horse’s career is well-documented. However, with Noel Hickey having passed away in 2014, three years before Ballaghmor Class and Oliver Townend’s Burghley win, there was precious little information about his breeder and pedigree.

Ballinvella?

The first roadblock to the Young Convinced dam-sire theory is that the stallion, another of Heenan’s, was foaled in 1991. Kilderry Place was foaled in 1990. Back to Square One.

Then the sharp-eyed West Clare Horse Show secretary Bridgette Coghlan spotted Carol Hickey, Noel’s daughter, tagged in a Tokyo Olympics social media post by Caroline Leahy, and passed the lead along. And that’s how Carol was tracked down for last week’s story.

Carol found Willie Kett’s phone number in her father’s phonebook and this week, the Cappamore man filled in a couple more jigsaw pieces. According to Willie, Noel and John Meade went to that horse sale in Cork where they spotted Kilderry Place.

(Which year and sale is unknown. West Cork Horse Breeders secretary John Coughlan recalled sales held in various venues such as the former Cork Showgrounds near Páirc Uí Chaoimh and Millstreet in the most likely timeframe of up to 2004.)

“Noel spotted this mare and foal and couldn’t take his eyes off them. The man came from up the Nenagh side and the mare was Ballinvella or Young Convinced out of an I’m A Star-Draught mare. It could never be proven as she had no book.

“The foal made little money but Noel kept on about the lovely-looking mare and between the two of them [Noel and John] they bought her for 400 quid. My involvement was saying Courage would suit her down to the ground.

“You’d think she was a thoroughbred, swan neck, big, kind eye with a little feather on her fetlock. She was not your average three-quarter-bred mare, she was a blood mare and looked the real thing.

"She looked way bigger than she was. She’d fool you until you walked into her and you’d see she was only 16 hands,” said Kett, describing Kilderry Place.

There was an informal three-way split between the trio over the Courage II foal. “He had a bit of class about him as a foal, even then he was grey with flecks and at six or seven weeks old, he’d jump the electric fence and jump back in to the mare when he saw you coming.”

With Young Convinced ruled out as the dam sire, (instead, I think the foal sold at Cork was by him which may explain how the stallion’s name is linked), his stable companion Ballinvella comes into the picture. Coincidentally, one of Townend’s earlier good horses Topping was by Ballinvella, as was Niall Griffin’s dual Olympian Lorgaine.

There are several Kilderry place names around Ireland. One, halfway between Crecora and Lough Gur is just 22kms from Noel Hickey’s house. “It’s not really the name my father would pick for a horse,” Carol said doubtfully.

Tim Heenan, Philip’s brother, who drove a milk lorry around north Tipperary and another fount of local history, does not know of any Kilderry around Nenagh. A 19th-century book mentions a Kilderry parish near Dolla but neither that or an elderly gentleman with bay Ballinvella-I’m A Star mare rings any bells with local sources.

Carol did find a note about a Robertstown Boy VII (Young Leabeg) colt out of Kilderry Place, foaled in 1997. Which means there was at least one (if this was the Cork sale foal) and probably two more (a Young Convinced?) half-brothers of Ballaghmor Class.

Was Kilderry Place by Ballinvella? Without DNA, we can’t say for certain. All we do know is some fairytale stories just aren’t meant to be unravelled.

What we know

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• There is no Ballinvella – I’m A Star bay filly foaled in 1990 on IHR Online.

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• Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) have no information recorded on their system for Kilderry Place, bar her year of birth (1990) and three registered foals (2005-2007).

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• The three foals – all colts – were by Gerry’s Clover (ISH), Tjipke (KWPN) and Courage II (HOLST).

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• There is no Weatherbys record for Kilderry Place, bar the DNA work carried out for those foals on behalf of HSI.

• Weatherbys require DNA from three additional offspring and also require their sire’s names in order to reconstruct a dam’s DNA.