THERE couldn’t be a more appropriate place to meet up with Joe Flynn than at the Horse Sport Ireland stallion inspections at Cavan this week. It’s where his Ardcolum Duke scored his first big result at the indoor international back in 2013 and where his owner has experienced both sides of the stallion inspections results.

Dreams are readily crushed in the sport horse world. However, the story of Ardcolum Duke and Billy Twomey’s successes and his owner-breeder is the stuff of such dreams that so often begins the day a mare is covered. And yet Joe Flynn’s tale has flown under the radar to date.

You soon discover why after meeting this unassuming gentleman. Like several other gentle characters in this West of the Shannon series, he doesn’t seek publicity and while his 15-year-old stallion has flown around the globe from Shanghai to Spruce Meadows, Dublin is the only international show Joe has watched him compete at.

The story began when Joe bought a Clover Hill yearling filly at an auction in Claremorris from her Sligo breeder Tom Fallon.

“I bought Dangerous Lady in Claremorris. She was off Clover Hill and we had another mare, a half-sister of hers too. We lost her [Templehouse] with colic, she was by Northern Value that stood with James McLoughlin in Killala, he also had Clover Valley.”

What did he pay at the time for Ardcolum Duke’s dam? “IR£1,900. It was a lot of money at the time! She was a year and a half old then.”

Foaled in 1988, Dangerous Lady was out of Water Temple and while her pedigree is officially unrecorded, according to Joe she went back to the well-known foundation sires Middle Temple and Ideal Water.

His purchase started to pay her way under saddle and she was produced in her novice days by a number of riders including Padraic Corcoran, Padraig Judge and Darragh Kerins, who jumped her up to 1997, the year she retired.

FIRST DUBLIN WIN

Padraig Judge won the Grade D/E championship with her in Dublin in 1995, the same year as another Clover Hill mare – Catherine Kenny’s Tell The Difference, competed by Tom Slattery – won the six-year-old championship.

“In the middle of the treble, she hit the pole but it stayed there. A good few jumped after her but none of them made her time and stayed clear. Some were faster but had a pole down,” recalls Joe gleefully.

Her sale to a Swiss buyer fell through and after Dangerous Lady retired from competition, she bred a total of six foals for Joe on his ‘bit of a farm!’ in Arigna.

“We couldn’t get her in foal. I went up to Master Imp and then I sent her down to Denis Phelan, to Flagmount King. We let her out then with a Connemara stallion [Brian Boru] belonging to Bolgers and she bred a nice foal.”

Rated as the leading mare, ahead of Diamond Explosion and Cruise Line in the Irish Horse Board’s fledgling BLUP study, crossing her with Gypsy Duke produced her best performer in Ardcolum Duke.

Foaled in 1983, Gypsy Duke was bred in West Cork by the late John McCarthy in Drimoleague. The traditionally-bred Irish Sport Horse was by The Conqueror, a son of Flagmount Boy, a stallion who has cropped up several times in recent articles, and was out of Gypsy Girl, by Kerrygold’s sire, Go Tobann.

Gypsy Duke later moved to Richard Woodroofe’s yard in Wicklow and then Sam Burgess in Castleblaney in Monaghan.

“I was great with Sam Burgess, I used Skylark, another of his stallions, as well,” says Joe, who is a mine of information on other stallions in the border counties. “There’s so many of them, owners and horses like Paddy Kelly, Frank Higgins and horses like Clontoo Lad, he was a Ben Purple horse and Kells Audience.”

Billy Twomey and Ardcolum Duke at the 2016 Dublin Horse Show. Photo Cody Glenn/Sportsfile

OFFERS ROLL IN

“I had a Lahinch mare for a long time, she was out of a snow-white mare by Inishfree. Vincent Faughnan had Lahinch. His father Andy bought the stallion in Co Clare and that’s where he got his name from. They bred Merrygold off him and then Pat Kinsella bought him later on,” he says about the sire of Kildalton Gold, Gold Link and Merry Mate. “I bred a horse by another stallion of Faughnans [Talarias] and he won a lot of showing in-hand.”

Ardcolum, Joe’s address, doubles up as his prefix. “Ardcolum Duke was very laid-back as a young horse. He still is, he has a great temperament, a real Irish horse. He did nothing as a youngster and then Shane Quinn took him to his first show at Turlough Equestrian Centre.

“I rang Jimmy McDermott [now Shane’s father-in-law, since Shane and Ita McDermott’s wedding last year] and said ‘How did you get on?’ I thought he might say he was no good but instead he said ‘You should have been there, the horse was jumping out of his skin!’”

After a spell too with young Manorhamilton rider Victoria Golden, Shane Goggins took over the reins in 2013.

Lisa Molloy, Joe’s neighbour and a paid-up member of the Ardcolum Duke fan club, takes up the story. “He went to Shane Goggins about six weeks before the stallion inspections in Cavan. Shane worked a lot with him and he just got better and better. He did the Connacht Grand Prix 1.35m league and was placed nearly every day he went out.”

Ironically, while it was his performance on the day at the 2013 inspections that initially saw Ardcolum Duke miss out on the first step to approval that day, his own record soon saw the stallion gain full approval. “His first move up was the Grand Prix in Millstreet, that was August,” recalls Lisa. “In September he jumped here in Cavan in the 1.50m class and again here in November that year, he came second.”

With his new-found form, came the inevitable offers. “The first day he went out in the Mullingar Grand Prix, Barry O’Connor rang that evening and enquired if he was for sale. That was only his very first Grand Prix.

“A lot didn’t like him to be a stallion,” says Joe, who continued to fend off offers for his horse. Then came a phone call from Padraig Judge that Billy Twomey may be interested in taking on Ardcolum Duke. “Billy Twomey rang me and I made up my mind within a couple of hours.”

The decision involved Twomey’s offer to take the horse for four weeks to see how they got on and with his breeder still not willing to sell the stallion, it seemed like a good compromise to take the horse to international level.

ORIENT EXPRESS

Having brought Ardcolum Duke to Frenchpark where he left on a horse transporter for Billy’s yard in Cheshire, Joe soon realised the distance the horse would be taken.

“Billy rang me and said ‘Do you think Joe will mind the horse flying?’ And I said ‘No, where are you thinking of taking him?’ China!” recalls Lisa. “He had him only about six weeks and brought him to Shanghai on the Global Champions Tour where he won €48,000.”

The horse has currently won over €200,000 in prize money. Without a sponsor, it all helps to balance the books as it was coal, not gold that Joe mined during his 30 years working at Arigna mines in Derreenavoggy.

“I cut coal with an air pick – it was like a pickaxe that used compressed air – brushed roads, did everything. We used to go to work on the back of a lorry that would pass by the house. That’s the only transport there was and after battling for years, they put a cover on the lorry on a winter’s morning going up the mountain with snow everywhere.

“A lot of the miners died young but the mines put butter on the bread. Everyone was the same and everyone was very happy,”

Seeing the horse consistently win on the international circuit obviously makes Flynn happy too. “Sometimes I get a few pounds, sometimes I don’t,” he says smiling. “The horse is very well looked after with Billy and he’s a very nice person. Alan Beaumont is another really nice man.

“Up to last year, Ardcolum Duke had won €190,000 but basically it costs that to run the horse. There’s livery, veterinary, farriery, A.I expenses, it costs a lot to run an international horse,” explains Lisa, whose work as an equine dentist, mainly in show jumping yards, keeps her up to speed with the high costs associated with competition horses.

“And then in Switzerland, there’s tax payable on prize money,” which is an added dent to the balance sheet, as Basel and Zurich are two of Ardcolum Duke’s regular jackpots on the international circuit.

SATISFACTION

Joe has brought along scrapbooks and The Irish Field cuttings of his stallion’s wins, ranging from Falsterbo to the Horse of the Year Show and of course Dublin, where he matched his dam’s red rosette.

It’s evident that the horse’s career has brought him great satisfaction too. “It’s an extra bit of pride to know that you bred him,” adds this soft-spoken character. “He had a couple of great wins and results in Dublin. I was very proud of him as he was going to the last fence in the Accumulator and he ending up winning it that year.”

So unassuming is he, that Lisa discovered him and his wife Tess sitting in the public grandstand to watch their horse. “Joe paid to sit in the stands even though he had international owner wristbands, he thought it only got him in the gate,” she says about the couple, rerouted to sit in their rightful places near the President’s Box.

TRADITION

Ardcolum Duke is something of a poster child for traditional Irish breeding and the Traditional Irish Horse Association were quick to capitalise on this. Joe has been the beneficiary of several presentations, including one made by the TIHA president and his great friend Hugh Leonard at its annual general meeting in Horse & Jockey one year.

Another presentation was made at the 2017 Dublin Horse Show and Chris Ryan, the commentator for the TIHA displays and presentations in Ring 2 that day, spoke at Cavan about Joe and Ardcolum Duke’s contribution to traditional breeding.

“He’s one of the best 1.45m horses in the world, he and Billy are practically unbeatable and what a superb horse he is. So the presentation made to Joe at Dublin two years ago was in appreciation for what he’s done to promote traditional breeding,” said Ryan.

The subject and viability of traditional horse breeding induces much discussion. Converting talk into income, via stud fees, would be another source of income for the stallion’s connections, although disappointingly, Ardcolum Duke has attracted a veritable handful of customers to date.

The greatest drawback appears to be his availability solely through frozen semen, due to his busy competition career and the knock-on costs for traditional breeders, to offset against poor prices for traditionally-bred foals.

Joe Flynn is nothing if pragmatic about the situation, saying: “There’s a lot of people wary about the costs. As well as that, some of the half-breds are making horrible money. It’s very tempting when you hear that a man got €30,000 for a young horse not to think about using that stallion. Customers are not prepared to pay for them [traditional-breds] or are not prepared to change.”

He has a number of Ardcolum Duke’s youngstock. “I bred five last year, unfortunately one foal got killed, then I have one foal due this year and I have a three-year-old,” he says, before listing a number of other owners who were prepared to walk the talk about supporting traditional breeding and own more of the stallion’s offspring.

Joe and Ardcolum Duke are popular hits on the local Arigna Facebook page, which regularly posts updates on the stallion’s latest big result for its followers and with the help of social media-savvy Lisa, a Facebook page has also been set up to promote Ardcolum Duke. One current offer on the page is an opportunity to win a free covering for this five-star rated stallion.

Another change this year is that Roscommon vet Kate Murray, based with husband Keith at Four Mile House, is dealing with A.I enquiries. “Joe has used her for years to A.I his mares,” says Lisa about the logical step.

Breeding again from Dangerous Lady was ruled out a couple of years ago by Kate and the mare, described by Joe as a “little, cobby mare”, now enjoys an idyllic retirement on his farm.

“She’s 31 now and gets well fed every day,” he says about the mare with a home for life and a misnomer of a name. “She’s the quietest mare. If you didn’t put the latch on the door, she’d push it out and walk on by you and pass no remarks, just stand in the yard. Same as when she goes out in the field, she might gallop around but then she’d stand as soon as she saw you.”

“If she was sold to Switzerland, there’d be no Duke,” Lisa remarks.

Billy Towmey and Joe Flynn's Ardcolumn Duke winning at Wiesbaden. Photo Tomas Holcbecher

SECOND CAREER

Once again, Dangerous Lady’s sire and his owner crop up, naturally, in the conversation. “I covered the Inishfree mare with Clover Hill but unfortunately, she didn’t go in foal. There was a man from Cork there once who stayed overnight. He stayed over just to get the mare covered first by Clover Hill in the morning.”

Another anecdote involves the late Paddy Healy from Ballymote, who stood Ceredigion. “Paddy was a stallion master and he was down one day. He said to Philip, ‘I have two girls below, can I bring them up to the yard?’

“‘Are they critics?’ enquired Heenan.

“No,” replied Paddy about his two daughters.

“Well, then you can!”

Several of Joe’s children competed in ponies, including his daughters Siobhan and Sara, who completed the Irish National Stud management course and then went to work for Coolmore Stud in Australia.

“Siobhan had a pony we named Strawberry Cream, she was a roan. Colm was a great man for breaking the young horses and before that, he had a good pony one time called Midnight Runner. I bought her here in Cavan, she had no breeding but she was a real engine, she wouldn’t touch the jumps. We sold her to the Kerins and Francie will tell you she made a rider out of Darragh, she was a press button pony.”

Times change and interestingly, the closure of the coal mines at Arigna led to another enterprise and sustainable jobs. The Arigna Mining Experience is a unique tourist attraction with tours often led by ex-miners who double up as tour guides.

“They’re expanding it now. The canteen holds about 25 and when a bus comes, there could be 50 people,” says Joe, explaining how the attraction has expanded.

Similarly, he made a decision to carry on with traditional breeding when it started to wane and in his case was rewarded by breeding Ardcolum Duke.

“I would count myself lucky to have him,” said Joe Flynn.