TWO very good friends won two of Saturday’s mini classes at the Dublin Horse Show, while another won the day’s show hunter pony championship and all three are coached by Rachel Moore Rooney.

There was a quiet start to proceedings when the large field of Oblique Displays first ridden ponies entered Ring 1 at 8am. The vast majority were bred in Britain, but the top three in the final line-up were foaled in this country, which was a great result for Irish breeders.

Originally called in second, Co Armagh’s Lauren O’Rourke left the ring with the red ribbon on her mother Sarah’s Pineview Remeo, following an excellent individual show by a confident, empathetic young rider on a mannerly, well-balanced pony that appeared to love his job.

Lauren, who turned 10 the week before Dublin, has had a great season on the six-year-old grey gelding with their main successes coming at the Northern Ireland Festival in Cavan, where they were first ridden champions and overall reserve supreme, and at Balmoral, where they won the supreme mini championship.

The O’Rourkes purchased Pineview Remeo as a two-year-old from his breeder, Sharon Walsh, who stands his sire, Barrera Duke of Windsor, at her Pine View Ponies Stud on the Meath/Louth border. He is out of the Tanglewood Sceptre mare Dryfe Sceptres Fantasy. The Dublin winner is now on his holidays, as Lauren turns her attention to preparing her working hunter pony, Garnagree Golden Bravado, for HOYS, having qualified at the Royal Highland Show.

In addition to her mother Sarah, Lauren’s large support team at Dublin included her father Aaron, brother Brian, sister Rachel, uncle Cormac O’Rourke, who helped get the pony ready for the ring, and grandmother Kathleen O’Rourke who, we are told, is an expert in washing jodhpurs and polishing boots.