He was the top-ranked event horse in the Hippomundo rankings for 2023 and Ballaghmor Class has bounced back after a quiet 2024 to win the MARS Maryland at Fair International CSI5*-L today.
The 17-year-old and Oliver Townend have now won their fourth five-star event together, following their previous wins at Burghley (2017, 2023) and Kentucky (2021), plus more top-five placings at Badminton and Burghley.
Ballaghmor Class or ‘Thomas’ had already won over €560,000 before today’s €100,000 winnings are added to his lifetime earnings. And there’s quite a contrast between that 100k and his most recent pay when he won €471 at his prep run at Little Downham at the end of September.
A member of the British gold medal winning team at the Tokyo Olympics, an interrupted early season meant the Irish Sport Horse owners' Karyn Shuter, Angela Hislop and Val Ryan and Townend made the decision to withdraw the horse for consideration for this year’s Paris team.
His stable companion Cooley Rosalent was third at Maryland last year for Townend and is currently third in the Hippomundo eventing rankings.
So where has Ballaghmor Class finished in Hippomundo’s event horse rankings in recent years? His best results include being a poll topper in 2023, third in 2017 and 2019 and then fifth in both 2018 and 2021.
Ballaghmor Class was bred by the late Noel Hickey in Co. Limerick and is by the Holsteiner stallion Courage II . Brought to Ireland by Kedrah House Stud’s Tom Meagher, Courage II was by Capitol I out of Vamara, a full-sister to the influential Cavalier Royale.
Two of Cavalier Royale’s offspring are flying high in the Hippomundo rankings with Greenacres Special Cavalier topping the event horse rankings, while HHS Cavalier, the recent Grand Prix winner at the Longines League of Nations Cup final in Barcelona is the second-highest ranked Irish Sport Horse in the show jumping rankings (24th place overall).
Courage II also has the distinction of having three eventing offspring compete at the Rio Olympics: Cooley Rorkes Drift, The Duke Of Cavan and another previous Burghley CCI5*-L winner: Ringwood Sky Boy.
While Courage II’s pedigree is well established, little can be proven about the damline of Ballaghmor Class. His dam Kilderry Place has no pedigree recorded and was bought for €400 at a horse sale. Various names have been put forward for her sire with the most likely candidate being either Ballinvella xx, his non-approved son Young Ballinvella or Farhaan xx, while her granddam is said to be the great eventing sire of the 1990s: I’m A Star xx.
Whatever gaps there are in his pedigree, there are few chinks in Ballaghmor Class, surely one of the Greatest Of All Time five-star horses.
