Chloe keeps Kilbarry name flying with Shannon Spray win

Kilbarry Chloe provided a proud moment for the multi-talented Con O'Keeffe as she ran out a determined winner of the Irish Wire Products Irish EBF Shannon Spray Mares Novice Hurdle at Limerick on Sunday.

The Grade 3 prize considerably enhances the paddock value of the five-year-old Mahler mare, who is from a family that O'Keeffe has nurtured for some time.

The proprietor of Kilbarry Lodge Stud in Waterford, home to stallions Success Days, Pillar Coral and Diamond Boy, was also the trainer of Kilbarry Chloe, who had made giant strides since winning a maiden hurdle over three-quarters of a mile shorter at Wexford a week earlier.

Praising a "big team effort", O'Keeffe told Racing TV: "She's been promising that all the year, she's a staying mare, she needs soft ground, today's conditions were perfect for her.

"We'd have liked another week or two but these Graded races don't come so often so you've got to take your chances."

View result and watch the replay here

The family goes back to the granddam All Set, a half-sister to the brilliant chaser Merry Gale. She has produced the Henry VIII Novices' Chase and Peterborough winner Racing Demon and some very productive daughters including this winner's dam, the unraced Bob's Return mare Kilbarry Gem.

O'Keeffe continued: "Breeding is our game, we've got a lot of broodmares and we've had this family a long time, it's been so good to us. It keeps throwing up winners the whole time.

"We had the dam and the granddam, going back 25 years I suppose. The granddam has produced many winners, the first big winner she had was Racing Demon and all her progeny have all produced winners, it's a very prolific family."

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