THE Connery family’s Thynetocatcher pulled off a back-to-back double at Adamstown Show last Saturday when she won the feature showing event, the Tattersalls & Red Mills All Ireland thoroughbred broodmare championship. Tom Lombard and Robert Tyner chose the Catcher In The Rye 10-year-old as their champion from a quality field that included several blacktype mares.

“She was bought from the McGrath family, by my father John, and Roger [McGrath] continued to train her,” said Padraig Connery about their point-to-point, bumper and hurdles winner. “We’ve had great fun with her, she even ran at the Aintree Festival in 2011 and we brought a huge crowd of local supporters over, many of whom have continued to go back annually since”.

Sadly, John passed away in 2014 before her first foal, a Flemensfirth filly, arrived but the family intend to keep her to race. She currently has a Flemensfirth colt at foot and is now in foal to Yeats.

Jim Mernagh’s Supreme Leader mare Aura About You was the reserve champion broodmare, while her Milan foal at foot was judged the best filly. Daniel Berney owned the overall champion foal, a colt by Ocovango out of the Presenting mare Had To Be Done. A range of nominations to leading sires, including Castle Hyde’s Dylan Thomas, was another reason for the excellent turnout of 18 mares at a sunny Adamstown.