BERTRAM Allen stormed to victory this afternoon in the Christmas Masters class at London Olympia. The Wexford rider (21) guided the nine-year-old stallion High Valley to victory after a three-way jump-off in the fifth round of competition.

Allen was joined in the jump-off by Sweden’s Malin Baryard-Johnsson, who finished second with H&M Indiana, and Britain’s Laura Renwick who took third spot aboard Dominant H. Allen collected the top prize of €14,000, while Anthony Condon finished in seventh place with Chinook II.

The Masters competition allows each rider to select one fence to be raised before they jump their round, a format that Bertram Allen seemed to enjoy when speaking afterwards: “It’s a unique class, it gets really, really big in the end." He added: “It was very competitive, normally if you get to five rounds you have nearly won but there was still three in the jump-off today so it was really exciting. It’s hard tactics being in the middle of the jump-off. Laura [Renwick] had one down so I didn’t know how fast to go with Malin [Baryard-Johnsson] coming after, but thankfully I was just fast enough today."

Allen also spoke about the exciting stallion High Valley, owned by European Youngsters, “He is a great horse. He was placed in the 1.50m class yesterday afternoon and maybe he will jump the big class tomorrow night.”

THIRD IRISH WIN

Allen’s victory was the third Irish win so far this week at Olympia coming on the back of Antrim teenager Christopher Megahey’s Puissance win jumping the big red wall on Thursday, while Offaly’s Darragh Kenny also tasted victory at Olympia on Friday morning. Waterford’s Anthony Condon scored a third place finish in Saturday morning’s Father Christmas Stakes Accumulator with the the 11-year-old mare Fiona v/h Lemmenshof, adding to a runner-up finish for Condon and Balzac in Friday night’s Longines Christmas Cracker.