IF there’s another Galwegian who has seen the changes, not only in bloodlines but buying patterns, its Gabriel Horan. A succcessful producer of young horses, he has attended the Ballinasloe Fair since the 1960s. It’s a tradition he and sister Geraldine continue, one started by their late parents, the well-known Billy and Breda Horan.

Billy, a butcher by trade, and the ever-stylish Breda, a shrewd judge too, were a familiar sight for decades at shows in the west of Ireland.

“Dad judged horses, my mother judged ponies and they were always at shows with a picnic basket and fold-up chairs.”

For the Horan family and many other western showgoers, the Galway County Show was another carved-in-stone event on the calendar. The “Connaught Horse Show” began in the city centre’s Eyre Square in 1892 and the Midland Great Western Railway even advertised special train excursions from Mullingar and Loughrea to Galway for the occasion. According to Niamh O’Dochartaigh’s informative book, Galway Show - The Story, the show later moved to the Sportsground on College Road, Ballybrit, Clarenbridge and back to Ballybrit, this time the Racecourse, where the final showing classes were held in 2016.

Gabriel remembers those switches well. “At 13, I won my first cup in Galway Sportsground. I remember Eddie Macken jumping Easter Parade in the Sportsground. He started with Iris Kellett, although that Mespil Road yard is long gone.

“I showed a pony there once at an arranged viewing, as a buyer was at Kellett’s to look at a selection of ponies. We came home with an empty horsebox, after driving over to the Mespil Road T-junction and having something to eat in Jury’s Hotel.

“To the best of my recollection, Galway County Show moved to Clarenbridge around 1978. The show jumps were stored in the yard at John Brennan’s house: Fort Lorenzo. Myself, David Moore and Sean Hardiman with our three lorries - a Ford, Hino and Bedford - would ferry the jumps out to Clarenbridge and back in again the following week.”

Ballinasloe, both the fair and agricultural show, was traditionally the last stop of the year for many, including Gabriel’s cousin Owen. “Owen is my first cousin and his first good horse in the late 60s was a dark brown mare called Butcher’s Girl.

Classified finds

“My first real memory of Ballinasloe Horse Fair was probably in 1971, when we bought a good jumping pony there called Rosedale. At the same time, we had Tulira Maria, a good show pony, from Lady Hemphill’s Connemara pony bloodlines. Both ponies were sold, one year after the other, to the same family in Norfolk.

“I remember the road was so packed one year at Ballinasloe that we couldn’t get the ramp down to load, because everyone had parked so tight along the road.

"Dad had a Ford Granada and a two-tone Rice Beaufort, and the only way to load the pony was to drop the front ramp and reverse him up!

“The McCartans, parked nearby, were in the same boat. The brothers had done well in business, and both had Rover 2000 cars; Eugene’s was a mustard colour and Paddy’s was British racing green. His son Jim and I used to show ponies against each other. Jim won all over with a lovely pony named Cusop Songster,” he said, recalling the Hollymount family of Hail Titan fame.

“Another family that comes to mind are the O’Malleys; George Snr, his son George and daughter Susan. George Snr. was another good friend of ours and he always said I was like a rubber ball, because if I fell from one of our lively young horses, I’d be back up within a second!

“I jumped Rosedale at the Spring Show and, on the way home, Dad detoured to Streamstown to buy a Blue Cliff-Merrion yearling, Silver Princess.”

Before social media and smartphones, the weekly classifieds were the go-tos for these finds.“No doubt Dad sourced her and more, such as Stoney Island and Shannon Island, from the Journal. Since I was a child, the Farmers Journal and The Irish Field were in our house every weekend.

“For the most part, my sister Geraldine was the one photographed at shows for the papers. That happened so many times, but it didn’t bother me!” Gabriel remarked about their lack of sibling rivalry when it came to the ‘picture in the paper’.

Three generations

“As a four-year-old, Silver Princess shared first prize at Ballinasloe with Francie Kerins and Giovanni and, the next day, she won the ridden hunter class. Ballinasloe was a three-day show then and myself and Francie were the only two through to the third round.

“As neither horse was Grade A, they didn’t put us against the clock. That’s how we ended up sharing first prize and Francie was lucky enough to have his name drawn for the cup. It’s funny; if you try explaining Grade E classes now, it’s all in fence height centimetres, and there was no technology back then either.

“Silver Princess ended up in Switzerland, but she was first spotted at Ballinasloe. You had scouts back then, such as Frank Kernan. Anything going to Italy went through Frank.

“David Broome bought two horses from our yard in the ‘70s, although he decided to take a shortcut through the fields and got chased by a ram. Being a Welshman, he was well able to outrun him!

“Everything has changed with the marketplace now. Then, there were certain levels of sales right the way through; you had your competition horses, started off at the Rockmount winter league and were usually sold at Dublin. They went big money.

“If you had a good horse that was a little bit unlucky and didn’t qualify, you could still get him in the RDS backdoor in a hunter class. People of that time weren’t fazed by a horse not qualifying - if they liked what they saw, they still bought.

“Then you had ones that you didn’t feel would make the grade and, rather than put a lot of time into that horse, you sold at an economy price rather than carry the horse over the winter.

Hotbed

“Kilrush was another main supplier of horses for us, we never missed a March fair,” Horan continued. “I can still picture three generations of the Kernans in Kilrush; James, Frank and Frank’s father walking up the middle of the street.”

Leapy Lad, by Coevers, is another of Ballinasloe Fair’s claims to fame and just one of many Banner-breds sold at Ballinasloe. After his double clear with George Stewart on the 1984 winning Aga Khan team, the horse was later sold, through Dermot Forde, to Jay Land in Atlanta.

The pair went on to win the Hampton Classic, compete in the 1986 World Cup final and, later that year, finished second to Rockbarton and Gerry Mullins in the Dublin Grand Prix.

“County Clare was a hotbed of breeding, they had good stallions but they had very good breeding men down there too.”

Galway too had stallion household names then. “You had Primal and Middle Temple, side by side, back in the early ‘70s; Frenchwood was another famous stallion then.”

Gabriel put away his tack and riding boots after years on the circuit. “Eventually, I wanted a steady career away from horses, so started driving lorries full-time.”

He and his daughter, Lauren, continued to show ponies for several years. “Lauren lives in Maastricht, just over the border from Lanaken and less than 30 miles from Aachen. She got married this summer to Stefan Coumans.

“I’ve been over loads of times to visit her. Lauren works for Mercedes Benz and, no company car, she drives her own Peugeot!”

As down-to-earth as the rest of her family.