THE third round of the 2025 Baileys Horse Feeds Flexi Eventing series at The Meadows was staged last Saturday, marking the halfway stage of the league, which is currently headed by Zara Reid and her father Paul’s 15-year-old British-bred mare Greylands Diamond Girl.
Reid and the bay, who have recorded some excellent performances under Eventing Ireland rules since the start of the 2023 season and landed a 17-runner EI90 (P) class at The Clare last July, top the leaderboard on 29 points. Just one point adrift lies another pony rider, Catherine Cowan, with Lady Remarque, while senior competitor, Nikki Cullen, is in third with Gemstone Ruby (26).
Reid has a second string to her bow in Major Cross, with whom she is lying fourth in the league on 25 points, and, on a score of 72%, she filled the runner-up position in Section B of the Intro class on Saturday with that 10-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding. The Insatiable 10-year-old is a new ride this season for Reid, having been campaigned previously by Alex Byrne, who rounded off her partnership on the chesnut with a second-place finish in the CCI1*-Intro at Lisgarvan last August.
Lucinda Webb-Graham’s winner of the 17-strong class was Scarvagh House stable jockey Connor McClory riding Vina Buller’s Bestman Bryan (73.5) who, with a good performance in the other two phases as well, secured the day’s Treo Eile prize for the leading thoroughbred.
By the German stallion Lauro, the five-year-old bay was bred by Alfred Buller and is unraced like his dam, the Desert King mare Dans Desert, a half-sister to Handtheprizeover (by Exit To Nowhere), a five-time winner over fences. This is also the family of the blacktype performers Exit To Wave, Robin de Sherwood and Little King Robin.
Highly regarded
One of the Eventing Ireland Northern Region’s graduate dressage judges, Joanne Cairns, assessed the 27 combinations forward in Section A, where North Down Pony Club member Reid and Greylands Diamond Girl finished second on 73.3% behind Christine Findlay and Parklodge Over And Under (73.5), who improved a place on week one.
Findlay is targeting the upcoming EI season at EI90 level with the British-bred Parklodge Over and Under, who she purchased three months ago. The 10-year-old Diarado gelding is out of the Dutch Warmblood mare Zarina (by Houston) and is thus a full-brother to the year-younger mare Parklodge Side By Side (CCI4*-S).
Casey Webb, who partnered four of the 12 starters in the Novice class judged by Webb-Graham, had a best-placed position of second on the ISH gelding You Neek (75.8). This Diamond Roller bay won the five-year-old young event horse championship at the Dublin Horse Show last August, when he was ridden for owner Jenny Smith by her husband Steven.
You Neek, who is out of a Camiro de Haar Z mare, is very highly-regarded in the Smith Brothers Eventing yard but, on Saturday, the up-and-coming youngster had to settle for the runner-up spot behind the vastly experienced veteran Arodstown Aramis (76.8). This Denis Currie-owned and ridden Shannondale Sarco St Ghyvan bay, a multiple past winner of this Baileys Horse Feeds Flexi Eventing series, is currently on 18 points, as is the above-mentioned Parklodge Over And Under.
Coreen Abernethy had just four combinations to judge in the Intermediate, where she awarded her highest score (67.8%) to Molly O’Connor riding the previous weekend’s runner-up, Stillbrook Aoife, the traditionally-bred ISH mare on whom O’Connor finished 23rd of 56 in the CCI3*-S at Kronenberg last October. The nine-year-old Watermill Swatch mare was bred in Co Laois by David Wallis out of Stillbrook Katie, a daughter of Classic Vision.