HAVING a cheerful word with exhibitors down along the line at the end of a class is one of judge Clare Oakes trademarks and it was no different at Ballinasloe in September 2016. “Smiling through the torrential showers was Clare Oakes who deftly judged the opening championship,” read the show report in The Irish Field the following Saturday about Oakes judging of the All Ireland two-year-old Connemara filly final, won by the Walsh family’s Moyabbey Twilight.

Earlier that month and as told last week, Clare’s daughter Susan had sustained a brain injury when her side saddle broke during a warm up session before the Central Park Horse Show in New York. “She will be fine,” predicted her mother that day. A positive outlook runs in the family DNA and anecodtes involving Connemara ponies are never that far away either.

Glencarrig Romeo, “a lovely, quiet pony” was bought from the Naughton family in Rosmuc for Susan, whose balance had temporarily been affected by the fall. “She started back riding and hunting with him and came right again,” Clare remarked about their “wonder pony”.

Three years previously, Susan had set two world records for side-saddle jumping and again, there’s a Connemara tale attached. “One was with Bobby Sparrow Blue. Susan’s own pony was lame but Patricia Dalton very kindly lent Bobby at Clifden and he just took to side-saddle like a duck to water. The side-saddle high jump was a great crowd puller at Clifden,” said Clare, where the pair set a new record (1.35m) at the show.

The other record of course was the recently-recognised Guinness World Records feat with SIEC Atlas (2.03m) at the Horse Sport Arena in Abbottstown in October, 2013. “It’s like all mothers when I’m watching my daughter at these high jump record attempts. I let on I’m looking but your eyes are closed!

“The Guinness record was absolutely great, marvellous altogether and is definitely a huge milestone in Susan’s life. So many opportunities are presenting themselves as a result.

“I love when Susan and [her sister] Elizabeth come up with some new adventure, I’m always behind them in their endeavours.”

A man before his time

Making the most of opportunities is another family trait as Clare herself was an early ambassador for performance Connemaras. It was a chance meeting on the hunting field – “I don’t come from a family of established breeders with heritage going back hundreds of years but I’ve hunted with the Meaths and ridden all my life” – with the late Stanislaus Lynch in 1965 that converted her to the Connemara pony. And one in particular: Gay Lorenzo.

“Gay Lorenzo was owned by Stanislaus and at the time there was no ridden stallion classes back then but I wanted to show that stallions could be ridden. So he was saddled up near the church in Clifden, then we went down through the throngs of people in the street and into the showgrounds, me in my full hunting regalia!” said Clare, recalling their visit to the 1966 show with the four-year-old by Galway Bay out of a Dun Lorenzo dam.

“A lot of overseas visitors were really interested in him and asked if he could jump, I jumped him down by the old railway line, where the [Station House] hotel is now, anything that could be found to make the jump, poles and barrels, were used. He jumped great and the visitors were very impressed by him.

“Stan was definitely a man before his time as regards the Connemara pony. He was the only author in the world to have been awarded two Olympic diplomas for his writings on horses. He was an early champion of the Connemara Pony and his work on behalf of the breed was a major factor in restoring our native pony to the enhanced position it now enjoys in the equine world, yet he was no armchair promoter.

“He bred them, showed them, hunted them and helped establish a market for them in Europe and the United States. I’m proud to have had him as my friend and mentor and his wife Margaret as my travelling companion, sharing the same interests and love of the pony as I.”

Connemara ambassador

In last week’s article, Susan mentioned it was the Connemara Ballydonagh Mystique that started her fascination with greys.

“Bay Goodwin was a dear friend who sought my advice on purchasing a really good filly. I found out that Deirdre Gormally had brought Atlantic Mist and her filly to Scotland when she married, so we flew over and bought Ballydonagh Mystique,” Claire explained. “She was very successful in the showring and produced some very good offspring for Bay. Kilbracken Queen and Queen of the Hills also spring to mind as other good ponies Bay owned.

“I sold a Connemara to an Arab sheikh once, it was Margo Dean, Lord be good to her, that was the contact. The pony hunted with Susan when she was a little girl and Margo spotted him.”

No surprises then as to why this mother-daughter team are such fans of the native pony. “Susan is a great ambassador for the Connnemara Pony. She was always a gifted horsewoman and was invited over to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston. It was minus 15 degrees that day! She rode side saddle in the parade, wearing her green habit, on Sally Oxnard’s Connemara mare, Tower Hill’s Breeze. There was a lovely banner with all the names of the people that helped her get to Boston for the parade.

“I also bred Connemaras, I had one special mare Rathaldron Honey. I think you do need to be breeding to keep up and to gain the respect of breeders and exhibitors,” said Clare who secured one of the half-dozen places on the unaugural Irish Shows Association (ISA) junior judges course in Kildalton. She has also been on the Connemara Pony Breeders Society (CPBS) judges panel since 1999.

“I still have that letter from the Society. I was privileged to be asked, the same as when you get that phone call or letter asking you to judge. It’s humbling, it doesn’t matter where the show is in Ireland, the fact that someone has respect for your judgement is humbling. When you’re invited to judge an All Ireland final, it’s such a wonderful, wonderful privilege.”

Clare Oakes judging at Athenry in 2017 with her junior judge Peter O'Malley \ Susan Finnerty

She still enjoys judging, even in those torrential downpours. “To judge you need to focus, you’re hungry for the next class, waiting for the next pony to come in that gate. I’m equally at ease judging horses and Connemaras, having ridden and hunted horses all my life. We’ve shown horses and cobs that have won at Dublin,” added Clare whose late husband Oliver hunted an Irish Draught mare for 17 seasons.

Silverware project

That all-round knowledge of horses and ponies is applied in the show ring, along with her own rituals. “I keep myself to myself, I don’t be influenced. I just judge the animal. I love mentoring junior judges.

“I make it clear before the show starts what the ‘rules’ are; we look at the ring, we discuss where’ll they’ll line up. If I’m judging with a gentleman, I’ll say, ‘You present the rosettes in the colt classes and I’ll do the mares and fillies’ and I’m a stickler for pride in your appearance.”

Perhaps inspired by an invitation by show chairman Tommy Bennett to judge at Louisburgh one summer, she takes a particular interest in each show’s silverware collection. “Louisburgh was another show I was thrilled to be invited to judge at. It was lying dormant before it was revived. I’d gone down the previous night and I remember looking at a window display in Staunton’s chemist, all the cups and memorabilia from the old shows, it was amazing. I’m just sorry I didn’t take a photo of it.

“All those lovely country shows with those wonderful cups. Their background gets lost in the mist of times and people forget about the people who gave them. Maybe schoolchildren could take on the task of researching who donated them, it could be a project for Transition Year students this year? You don’t want that history to be lost.

“When I go to the secretary’s tent at the show in the morning, I look at the cups and get a small story about each cup just to make it more personal when you present it later. It’s important to remember their stories.”

Somehow stories often attach themselves to wherever Clare is. For example, going back to that All Ireland final at Ballinasloe when it turned out the champion was bought by breeder Tony Walsh’s children Rachel and Kevin with their First Communion and Confirmation money after they overhead their father was planning to sell Moyabbey Twilight as a foal.

And then there is the lovely anecdote about Ballyheane schoolboy Archie Rabbette, the youngest owner at the CPBS stallion inspections held in September, when she was the inspections chairperson. That the inspections took place at all in the midst of a pandemic was a godsend to owners, particularly as an outing for a young mask-wearing schoolboy back in the strange atmosphere of a Covid-19 classroom.

There that day to watch his father James present the colt Castleside Ard Rí, a gift to Archie from his late grandfather Mickey, Clare kept a watchful eye on the youngster.

“I love the photo of Archie and I, of course I’d take him under my wing and mind him,” said this grandmother of four. “His grandfather and I got on really well together, he loved an athletic pony. We had many deep conversations about bloodlines, he was a very knowledgeable man.”

Clare Oakes and young Archie Rabbette \ Susan Finnerty

Over the line

One silver lining of lockdown was more family time. “With the beautiful weather in the spring and early summer, we cleaned up all the ditches, fixed fences, hung gates, painted everything. I had time to talk to neighbours and friends and have picnics in fields with the grandchildren.”

The Irish Pony Club is another organisation fortunate to have these selfless characters and Tom Mullen, Gerry Brady and Micky Skelly are some of the other local Pony Club stalwarts mentioned by Clare, herself the vice-District Commissioner of the Meath Hunt branch.

“I’ve been involved for 30 years with the Meath Hunt Pony Club. I did the Covid-19 track and trace for every rally and event we managed to have this summer. We had a wonderful day cross-country schooling down in Carlanstown, we had our little two-day camp. We did a lot but for me, the highlight this year with the Covid, was to have the [CPBS] inspections for the breeders.

“It was a tremendous feeling. There wasn’t a bad second, just everyone was pulling together and we were really delighted to get the inspections across the line for the breeder-producer. Great teamwork by all concerned.”

Fifty years after that chance encounter with Stanislaus Lynch and their Clifden excursion, Clare returned west to deliver the Bartley O’Sullivan talk at the Connemara Pony Spring Festival in 2015. “I wouldn’t call it a lecture because I wouldn’t be fit to lecture anybody!” she said in her typical self-deprecating fashion and since last year, she has also been a member of the CPBS council.

“It’s my first year. There’s great people on the Council and I couldn’t speak highly enough of them and I’m delighted with the support.” Inspections over, there’s another plan forming for next year. “We are currently working on an assessment day for three-year-old geldings and fillies to help promote them to a wider market for 2021.

“Clifden is everything to the breeder; those lovely friendships and people meeting up together, the overseas visitors coming in year after year, it’s amazing to see this. I can’t speak of what will happen next summer - we just don’t know. We’re in that grey area.

“The Connemara pony is renowned worldwide. There is such pride in the people in the west about their ponies. It’s engrained into them, that knowledge, heritage and folklore west of the Shannon.

“Looking back, I’d buy eight Connemara geldings in the west, bring them home, break and hunt them. Then they’d all be ready for sale by May. They were a great ambassador for their dam too as it gave the breeder something to mention.”

How are sales in the year of the lockdown? “I didn’t buy any ponies yet. I’m cleaned out of all the ones I have as there’s a great demand. There’s still lorry loads of Connemara ponies leaving Ireland and there seems to be sales going on, the fact that I was cleared out of any stock I had was a clear indicator. I know there’s foals looking to find new homes but they will.

“I’m an optimist. To me, everything is wonderful. As soon as the lockdown is lifted, I’m off on a buying binge! And there will be a party eventually to celebrate Susan’s Guinness record whenever the lockdown is over,” vowed this glass-half-full character.