Evergreen nine-year-old homebred Surrounding wins Corrib Stakes for second time

Surrounding's poignant success in the Listed Arthur Guinness Irish EBF Corrib Fillies Stakes at Galway was remarkable, not for the last-gasp manner of her second win in the race, coming three years after her first, but for her age.

The late Peter Newell's homebred daughter of Lilbourne Lad is not only still in training but in the form of her life at the ripe old age of nine, which made her the oldest runner in Thursday's race by three years.

Trained by Michael Halford and ridden by Ronan Whelan, Surrounding showed that age has not blunted her finishing kick up the punishing Ballybrit hill as she came around horses to nab Emilie Gray in the shadow of the post.

Surrounding was making the 44th start of a career that began in a Dundalk maiden only at the age of four. She is now the winner of 11 of her races, with seven of those successes in black-type contests, and she has been placed in eight more.

She has been something of a standard-bearer for her sire Lilbourne Lad, a son of Acclamation who won the Group 2 Railway Stakes for Richard Hannon in his only season to race before retiring to stud alongside his sire at Rathbarry Stud.

Bred by Swordlestown Little Stud, Lilbourne Lad spent five seasons at the Cashman family's Cork farm before he was relocated to Turkey, and Surrounding became his first European Group winner when taking the Brownstown Stakes at Fairyhouse in July 2019, just a fortnight before her first success in the Corrib Stakes. She was third in the Brownstown earlier this month.

Bred at the Newell family's Readsland Stud, outside Dunshaughlin in County Meath, she is one of two winners out of Roundabout Girl, by Doubletour, a Lyphard half-brother to the brilliant and influential sires Kris and Diesis, and to Rudimentary.

Roundabout Girl produced five foals for the Newell family before she died at the age of 15, but they have retained her Bushranger daughter Dance Around for breeding and she has three- and four-year-old daughters by Estidhkaar.

The elder of the pair is named Estella Bella and has run three times this season, while the three-year-old, as yet unnamed, is in pre-training with Richard Brabazon. Dance Around has a two-year-old Alhebayeb filly and a yearling daughter from the first crop of Inns Of Court. She was covered again this year by Tally-Ho Stud's son of Invincible Spirit.

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