HORSE of a lifetime? He is, for sure. It’s what you dream of, to breed one like him,” said Patrick Connolly about the ‘millionaire horse’: James Kann Cruz. The Cummer farmer-breeder is typical of hundreds of this backbone breed throughout the country. Growing up with a love of horses, his was inherited from his late father Jim - hoping, always hoping, to breed a superstar.

Tools were downed in Irish households on the Friday of Dublin Horse Show to watch the Aga Khan Nations Cup. Literally, in Patrick’s case as the agricultural contractor would bring a portable television out to the machinery shed to watch his heroes, while fixing farm machinery.