Horse Racing Ireland celebrated its tenth annual awards yesterday and witnessed a unique treble for Ballydoyle with Aidan and Joseph O’Brien picking up the flat trainer and jockey of the Year and stable star Camelot landing the Horse of the Year honours.
Davy Russell was a popular recipient of the National Hunt Jockey while Peter Casey got a taste of possible honours to come with Flemenstar when he collected a special achievement award.
Ballinrobe was the first recipient of the Racecourse of the Year Award and Moyglare Stud was honoured for its contribution to the industry.
“2012 has proved to be another excellent year for Irish trainers and jockeys both at home and abroad,” said HRI Chief Executive Brian Kavanagh who spoke having just landed back from Hong Kong where Irish horse Gordon Lord Byron finished fourth on Sunday in the Longines Mile.
“We had an impressive tally of eight Irish winners at Royal Ascot and four of the five major races fell to Irish raiders on British Champions Day. Cheltenham saw five Irish-trained winners and no less than 12 Irish-trained seconds, Irish jockeys won 22 of the 27 races and Irish-bred horses won 12 races including six of the Grade 1 contests.”
“At this year’s Melbourne Cup the first seven horses home were Irish-bred. Recognising and rewarding this success is of great importance to Horse Racing Ireland.”
Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney spoke in glowing terms of the sports contribution in economic and reputation terms and revealed that legislation to extend betting duty to online bets would be in place from February.
He did warn however that this would not go automatically towards racing and that the Department of Finance were unlikely to sanction such ring fencing.  It would strengthen his hand in maintaining the central funding for the sport though and was a positive move with which to welcome the new Chairs of Horse Racing Ireland and the Irish National Stud that were also announced yesterday.
Joe Keeling will take over from Denis Brosnan at the sports governing body. Keeling comes from a business rather than a racing background and heads the Keeling’s Fruit and Veg business in North Dublin that is one of the largest indigenous companies in the agri-business sector.
He has owned horses with Dermot Weld and Michael Grassick among others in the past and had two winners in 2011 in Teach Nua and Elusive in Paris.  He did not record a success in 2012 but has now landed one of the most important prizes in the sport at a time when things are starting to bounce back from a tough period of recession.
Matt Dempsey takes over as Chair of the Irish National Stud having recently retired as editor of the Farmers Journal.
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