BETTER known in jumping circles, Pony Tales was keen to hear from Co Galway show jumper, Sorcha North, after her name appeared in the results of the bumper in Thurles last Friday aboard the six-year-old Shake The Bag.

Sorcha and her husband Mark Byrne run Northbrook Farm in Aughrim, near Ballinasloe, as well as the hugely successful Equine Engineering business. The racing experiment started seven years ago, when Mark started to buy thoroughbred foals. The first of those was Sarah Beara, who Sorcha broke and backed before she went on to have a great career. “I named her after my best friend, who died of a heart attack in her sleep when I was 21, so the horse is kind of special and sentimental, which is a bad idea with a racehorse!”