THERE was a very curtailed go-around in both of the riding horse classes which got the flat showing action under way in Ring 1 at 9am last Wednesday morning.

Riders, some of whom only participated in one or other of these classes during the show, got poor value for their entry fee as did those who had to qualify four and five-year-olds in order to enter.

There was no change of rein and riders were asked to gallop their horses on the right rein when it is usually seen on the left. Then there was a seemingly unnecessary, lengthy break between classes.

The champion and reserve of the Tiernan Gill, Gill Group-sponsored section both came from the 18-strong large riding horse class where Brian Murphy finished first on Amanda Benson’s MHS Lady Master while Rachel Moore Rooney placed second with Gemma Conlon’s Irish Sport Horse mare Lisbrogan Tigerbillie.

This championship victory was quick compensation for Benson, who had seen her 2019 Gortfree Hero gelding BC Flurry Knox being eliminated in the four and five-year-old performance Irish Draught class, having jettisoned his rider at the bank; he had gone very well to that point.

The 2019 mare MHS Lady Master didn’t go to any shows last season when purchased as a four-year-old. This year, she has been to Balmoral, where she finished third, Mullingar, where she qualified for the Royal International Show but didn’t travel, and Ballyfoyle, where she won her class and was reserve champion ridden horse to Peaky Blinder, and Ballivor, where she won her class and went champion.

MHS-bred

Benson’s champion has no recorded pedigree, but is catalogued as being bred by Tom Brennan and is said to be a half-brother to MHS Morning Master, who won the three-year-old championship for Murphy and Sinead Brennan here in 2018 and was crowned show hunter of the Year at HOYS last October for Jill Day and Robert Walker.

Gemma Conlon’s Lisbrogan Tigerbillie won a lot of classes and championships in-hand in Britain, especially in 2022. She joined the Moore yard at the end of May this year and won three championships on her three previous outings. The five-year-old by Tiger Attack is out of the Hand In Glove mare Treslissick, dam previously of the Balmoral and Dublin champion, Lisbrogan Gold.

Lisbrogan Tigerbillie was bred by Gemma’s brother Thomas whose sudden death on Saturday rocked the showing world at Dublin.

Jamie Smyth’s week started with a win in the small riding horse class on Debbie Harrod’s Anglo European Studbook-registered Lulu de Beau, an eight-year-old daughter of Don Aqui, who won the equivalent class at Balmoral in May.

William McMahon finished second on his wife Grace Maxwell Murphy’s ISH gelding Gleann Rua Monarch, a five-year-old Moylough Legacy half-brother to their 2022 supreme hunter champion, Gleann Rua da Vinci (by Camillo VDL).