THE Oldenburg stallion OBOS Quality 004 headed Eventing Ireland’s Top 10 list of sires this year on 394 points followed by the Swedish Warmblood sire Jack Of Diamonds (323) and last year’s winner, the traditionally bred Irish Sport Horse Puissance (273).

Having finished second on the Top 10 list of riders and owners himself, Ian Cassells helped Quality reach the top spot on the sires’ leaderboard thanks to the results he recorded on his own Kellys Quality (62) while the mare Miss Matana earned 48 points under Clare Abbott and Daniel Alderson.

Kellys Quality picked up 16 points when winning the CCI3*-S at Millstreet (1) in early June and 24 points when landing the EI120 at Kilguilkey in mid-August. Later that month, the eight-year-old was leading after dressage and cross-country in the CCI3*-L at Millstreet (2) but was withdrawn by Cassells having given himself a knock.

Kellys Quality had done a season’s show jumping before joining Cassells’s south Co Dublin yard last year so he started the horse off at EI110 level in July, moving him up into EI115 company two months later. In 16 outings, he has only twice finished outside the top nine – when 16th in the CCI3*-L at Kilguilkey House (1) in June this year and when withdrawing at Millstreet.

The bay was bred in Co Roscommon by Francis Kelly out of the 1997 Supreme Leader mare Kellys Leader who ran without distinction in bumpers and over hurdles.

Also contributing to Quality’s position at the top of the sires’ leaderboard were John Glynn’s Shanaclough Quality Clover (29), Sarah Ennis’s KSH Touch Of Quality (27), Richard Ames’s Ballyvillane OBOS (23), Paddy Byrne’s BGS Golden Touch (22), Nicky Roncoroni’s Sixmilewater (21), Ivan Hatton’s Oakland Quality (19) plus Rodney O’Donnell’s Dartans Hillcrest and Global Event Horses’ Global Fugitive who earned 18 points apiece.

As OBOS Quality 004 and Puissance are both dead, and the last crop of Jack Of Diamonds foals in Ireland were born in 2016, we should mention the fourth-placed sire on the list, Womanizer, whose progeny earned 205 points. The 18-year-old Dutch Warmblood son of Heartbreaker is hale and hearty at Kylemore Stud in Co Galway where, we are told, he thinks he’s three!