JOSEPH Murphy won and finished second in the EI110 at Finvoy last Saturday with two new rides for this season, Derroon Diplomat, who completed on his dressage score (31.8) on his first outing at this level, and Halston Sebastiana who added 2.8 cross-country time penalties to her flat work mark of 29.5.

Now owned by Annette O’Callaghan, the Ricardo Z gelding Derroon Diplomat was produced by Sarah Ennis for Derek McConnell last season when he was the country’s leading five-year-old, winning four of his seven EI100 starts (all but two of which were confined to his age group) and placing second twice.

While all didn’t go to plan on his second run for his new connections at Tyrella (3), Murphy was happy to move the bay up a grade on Saturday. “Derroon Diplomat has a bit of mileage up from last year so it was just a matter of giving him a couple of pre-novice runs to get to know him.

“He has all the attributes you’d want in a good young horse. He will do a few novice events and hopefully will start in a long format international during the summer and then build on that during the autumn.

“The mare (Katie Naysmith’s Sirillio bay Halston Sebastiana) is a seven-year-old so I might bring her to Tatts for the young horse class.

“She is good on the flat and has a very good jump. Both horses did nice dressage tests on Saturday and are shaping up the right way as longterm prospects.

“Even for us in Co Down, it’s a fair trip to Finvoy so we went up on Friday and saw the effort Alan Campbell and his team put in to having the tracks perfect for Saturday.

“It was unbelievable the work they did to turn things around and get everything right in such a short amount of time.

“They worked late into the night on Friday putting out sand where needed and all the fences were really inviting being well built and well presented.

TRAVEL

“It was great that so many southern riders were prepared to travel up so far and I was particularly delighted to see the two O’Learys win. They are trained by Michael (McNally) and Amanda (Goldsbury) but there is a close Westmeath connection between their family and ours through the racehorses.”

Murphy is not competing at Tyrella (4) today (Saturday) as he is riding Fernhill Frankie at Withington Manor this weekend before heading to Badminton with Sportsfield Othello. Derroon Diplomat was bred in Co Sligo by Sean Keevans out of the Cruising mare Dianes Cruise Clover whose dam, Dianes Clover, was by Clover Hill.

Ireland-based Finnish international Heli Nännimäinen recorded a two-point win over Casey Webb in the five-runner EI110 (Open).

Their respective mounts, Daenerys and The Wolf Man, shared the lead after dressage (26.8) before both picked up a small number of time penalties on the two jumping phases, the 10-year-old Limmerick mare being the faster to win on 29.2.

This was a first Eventing Ireland success for both Nännimäinen and Daenerys who had travelled out to Barroca d’Alva earlier in the year.