moortown house stud
W
HEN JOE BANAHAN watched the price for his New Bay filly soar past the €400,000 mark at the Goffs Orby Sale earlier this month, it all became a bit too surreal, and he got lost in his own abyss for a couple of
Moor the merrier
Joe and Edel Banahan of Moortown House Stud enjoyed a fine Goffs Orby touch when selling their sole offering, a filly by New Bay out of their mare Coco Rouge, for the stud’s best-ever sale ring price of €480,000. Ronan Groome chats to Joe, who breeds horses alongside his day job is as a race starter for IHRB
Photography by Laura Green
seconds. The slam of the gavel, a clap on the back and a few congratulatory outstretched hands clicked him back into the room, and he soon became enveloped in a sense of pride he has never felt before. When the dust settled, it felt like everything he had done as a breeder up until that moment and everything he’d do after it was all worth it. “We knew there was a lot of interest in her and, after the couple of days, we thought we might get a little more than we had initially hoped for,” reflected Banahan. “Everything went to plan with her. You felt the interest was there. I thought maybe she might hit €300,000, which would have been incredible, but you never know, do you? “She went past that mark and it was like rapid fire, the bidding just took off. When she got to €400,000 you just go numb. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I said, to myself, ‘This is our animal in the ring. We created this animal!’ “I got a bit of a tingle all right. It was an unbelievable feeling.” The sale of the sixth foal, a filly by New Bay, out of his mare Coco Rouge was easily the biggest touch landed by Moortown House Stud, which is based just outside Navan, County Meath. The farm is run by Banahan and his wife Edel, having previously been developed into a stud farm by Joe’s parents Percy and Elaine. Their operation is small and select because it has to be. Banahan has worked for the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board for 25 years and his job as a race starter requires him to travel the length and breadth of the country. There are only so many hours in the day and consequentially, so many mares at home, where Edel also plays an integral role. Like plenty of small scale breeders their budget for prospective broodmares is comparatively very low and so they’ve already defied huge odds in breeding a filly that, at a sales price of €480,000, was the eighth highest-priced lot sold at the Orby Sale. Of course, luck played a part, but if there are two things that describe the Banahan operation, it’s attention to detail and patience, and in this case those characteristics paid off in spades. “I had Coco Rouge picked out before I went over to Newmarket,” recalls Banahan when remembering
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