A NEW venue with some new thinking. Having recently returned to Ireland armed with all he learned and experienced in Europe, Patrick Delaney and his wife Jessica run Garranemore Equestrian in Co Limerick, where the shows they run and the young horses they produce are attracting plenty of attention from Ireland’s equestrian community.

“I grew up here in Pallasgreen. I began riding in an equestrian centre, Hillcrest, with Roddy O’Donnell,” Patrick told The Irish Field. “I began competing when I was about age 10. I didn’t really compete in ponies, my first pony was a trotter and she competed up to 1.20m.

“When I was 15, I moved down to Philip Horgan in Rathcormac, Co Cork. I stayed and worked for him for about three years. That was where I really learned my trade, he had about 15 or 20 horses in work. Philip had just come back from Germany, where he jumped to a high level and worked for Franke Sloothaak, who would have been one of the most successful riders in the world at the time.

“When he moved back to Ireland, he set up Carleton Stables, and was buying and selling a lot of horses.

Moving abroad

“Philip then got me a job in Germany, where I worked for Erwin Hesse and Lisa Mayleen Thoma for about 18 months. During that time, I had bought three or four horses of my own with a friend of mine, Robert Buckley.

“We had started dealing a bit, so we needed a bit more space and flexibility. I ended up getting a job at the Van De Heffinck stud in Belgium. I rode three stallions for them in competition and, in return, got three or four stables for my own horses.

“My wife Jessica’s home place was literally across the road, so that’s how we met. It went from one thing to the next and we ended up renting two yards between us; myself, Robert and Jess.

“We had a lot of horses and, over the space of about four years, we sold lots of them.

“We had our daughter Anna Lia in 2019 and we wanted to buy a place in Belgium, but when we looked further into it, the land was so expensive that we decided to move back to Ireland to my home place in Pallasgreen, Co Limerick.

“There was nothing here really, just a couple of stables on four acres. We developed it all bit by bit.

“We worked really hard setting everything up, arenas and stables, all that. Then, after about six months, we decided to bring nine horses to compete in Vilamoura in Portugal in January 2021. We got on well there and made a lot of useful contacts.

Change of course

“We had done well in Portugal and, on our return, I wanted to concentrate on establishing myself in Ireland. Just after we got home, I had a bad accident. I fell from a youngster; I broke eight bones in my pelvis and both my hips. I was in a wheelchair for two or three months.

“Everything had been going so well for us; we had all these horses and I couldn’t do anything. We had a very difficult 12 months.

“We had a lot of time to think then. We knew I would be out of action for a long while, so we started to think how are we going to make a living out of what we’ve got.

“We had a large arena already and we thought, what if we remortgage and build a proper warm-up and we hold shows?

“We came up with the idea and, just a few weeks later, we hosted our first show in September 2022. We’ve been running shows since and they’ve helped us get back up and going again.

“I’m back riding again, so our model of what we originally wanted to do is back up and running, we’ve got more horses to sell.

“Alongside the shows, which we continue to run, we have people coming back and buying horses and ponies again.

“Because the shows were so successful, we decided to put any money we made back in and, in January of this year, we did a lot of renovations; we extended the arena, we landscaped the place, we resurfaced the warm-up again, we added parking and we bought more jumps.

“I went and became a course builder, and Jess is a judge. Something else I have looked into is stabling; the Limerick Junction racecourse is only eight minutes up the road and it has huge capacity, so that could be an option in the future.

Pride

“We enjoy what we do. We are ‘people’ people. We take pride in the place; it’s not just about the money, it’s about having the best venue that we can. We try not to overlook anything, we try to make our place as welcoming as possible.

“When we first began looking at footing for the arena, there were a few options. We have a friend, Peter Morrison, who deals in surfaces. He is from South Africa and he said he would help us.

“He said go and get sand samples from a 50-mile radius. Jess and I set off to do just that. Peter tested it all and the one we got from Seamus Ryan in Tipperary came up on his lab results as fantastic, but it had never been used on jumping surfaces before.

“He said go with that. It wasn’t that expensive at the time, so we put it in and our fibre came from Holland. Since we’ve put in ours, there must be 20 other people who have put in arenas using that sand. It has ‘discovered itself’ if you want.

“The surface is only 60% really; it’s the maintenance that is the real key. Keep it harrowed, watered, we rebury the fibre; that’s all essential. We have had a lot of advice from Peter, which has been so useful.

“We bred a small number, but our main stock we buy, mostly two to five-year-olds. They will stay with us for anywhere from a week to a year, but generally not longer than that.

“Jess has so many contacts in Holland and Belgium and she is an amazing horsewoman; she has such a good eye. She has found a lot of horses for us that went on to do good things.

Future Stars

“The idea for the Future Stars Cup came from us wanting to do things a little different. I think Ireland has a lot of superb horses and riders, but we are sometimes a little slow in coming up with new ideas. We tend to just follow mainland Europe, just 10 years later.

“We try to be forward thinking, and work with and listen to people like Greg Broderick, who are very successful.

“Moving towards judged classes, as opposed to jumping against the clock, comes from our background where we didn’t really do championship classes. When the horses were four and five years old, we just did smaller shows and, if you did it right, they still got sold for the same money. They left prize money behind them for sure, but were the better for it, because they weren’t pushed.

“Some classes in Ireland, the jumps are just too big for the horses and sometimes the riders. What we wanted was for the show to attract good horses and good sponsors. The idea is we want the best young horses, not the ones that have the most done. Not the most experienced four-year-olds, but the best four-year-olds.

“It’s a little harder to judge the six and seven-year-olds, because they are a little closer to the ‘big boys’, so we have to let them jump-off. We would love to eventually introduce feature classes; Puissance, six-bar and Grand Prix, which would be attractive to the general public.

“We have a coffee shop; we are looking to expand little things, so that your average person up the road will pop in and watch competitions, just like they would a GAA match. That’s the direction we would like it to go eventually.”