Kildysart lambs await starter’s gun

CLARE’S speediest, leanest lambs are in the zone. They are just over a week away from bursting from their pens and chasing racing glory in Kildysart.

The Kildysart Cultural Festival starts this Friday and concludes on Sunday, August 11, when the lamb racing will be the highlight of the closing day’s entertainment.

Up to 36 lambs have been training regularly in Kildysart, with Sunday week in mind. They are probably unaware that among their strength and conditioning coaches are local butcher Michael O’Grady and James Guinnane, who buys lambs and sells them to butchers.

Festival committee chairman Gary O’Donoghue, Fintan Ginnane and committee secretary Shona Cleary are all part of the coaching staff.

“We’ll be having six races and possibly seven. There will be six lambs in each race. We need to make sure that the lambs won’t get tired, so we’ll only run them once,” Shona explained, adding that the race track will be about three-quarters of the field at the rear of Kildysart playground.

It’s not simply a test of the lambs’ pace that’s ahead of them though. They must master a few jumps as well.

“We’ll be introducing them to the hurdles now and getting them to jump them. We’ll have about four. We’re not sure about the height yet. It depends on how high they are willing to jump. I’d say the jumps could be about the height of a chair. But it depends on how they get on at training. They’re very committed, to be fair to them,” Shona noted by way of tribute to the dedicated lambs.

The coaches’ training strategies have evolved as they got to know their friendly flock.

“When we started we were trying to get them to run one at a time and see what way it was going. But we realised you need to train them in groups. They all run in the one direction then. Otherwise, they were running in every direction. We had started with 10 or 12 in a group but we said we’d better go back to six lambs, which will be the case in each race. We didn’t want them to get used to having a flock of lambs with them and they all running together,” Shona said.

Initially the lambs needed a bit of persuasion to stretch their collective legs.

“We figured out the best way to get them to run was to give them feed by running in front of them. Then, when they got used to the running part we started running after them and they’d all run in the one direction,” she added.

There was the odd emotional outbreak while the lambs were acclimatising to their athletic environment.

“They used to bleat a lot when we were training them individually. It was like they were lonely on their own.

With the crowd, there is the possibility that they will be bleating because they are used to only having a couple of us around,” Shona cautioned.

With close to 40 lambs expected in Kildysart on Sunday week, Shona isn’t concerned that there will be any identity mix-ups. “You get to know your lambs,” she reasoned.

The lamb racing is due to start at 1.30pm on August 11 and will be preceded by the start of a Honda 50 bike run, followed by a children’s tractor run.