Feature Story - Race Horse Owners

Racehorse Owners - No. 2 of a series.

LAURENCE BYRNE and his €10 million euro horse!

To an Irish owner with unbounded love and enthusiasm for National Hunt racing, money can’t measure the value of a winner at the Cheltenham Festival. Mere mortals may try to put a value on the horse, as the Racing Correspondent for a leading U. K. Daily tried at Cheltenham when Hardy Eustace won the Grade 1 Royal and Sun Alliance Novice Hurdle - “ surely Mr. Byrne you would take a million for him?”

“I wouldn’t take ten million!”, said Lar.

C'mon the Girls - on their way to Cheltenham to cheer home their hero, Hardy Eustace.

Anxious moments in the Parade Ring at this year's Cheltenham Festival

Owner Lar Byrne, Jockey K Kelly and Trainer Dessie Hughes

Hardy Eustace is an exceptionally good horse. Dessie Hughes, a great jockey in his day and now a successful trainer under both rules, bought him for Lar at Goffs Bloodstock Sales for €27,000 (having failed to buy him privately some months previously for considerably more money!). He is by Archway, a Champion Sprinter, out of a mare closely related to Star Appeal, winner of the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe . He has won over €220,000 to date. For his full Pedigree click here.

Hardy Eustace in front at the last at Cheltenham, March 2003.

Lar, his owner, has the boyish good looks of a TV star with a generous heart to match. He runs two successful businesses in his native Tullow (Co. Carlow), Byrne Food Products (Distribution) and Wrap Rite (Contract Packaging).

Lar Byrne leading in the winner

Joy on the Presentation Podium.

He loves the racing game and all that goes with it - drama, excitement, competition and good companionship, and he is not a stranger to the accidents that can happen - he lost Parkgate, one of the most exciting horses of his generation when he unfortunately broke a leg on the gallops and had to be put down. The loss of such a beautiful and talented athlete deeply affected Lar, and it is wonderful to see that the Gods of Racing have seen fit to bestow on him Hardy Eustace, another horse with outstanding ability. We hope to see them both in the Winners’ Enclosure at all the major N. H. Meetings several more times in the years ahead. Lar Byrne and his horses are the best advertisements the Sport could ever have.

"We've done it!!"

Photos by Grossick Photgraphers.