UNDERAGE riders were in invincible form at Annaharvey last week, where they dominated the feature classes. Many were making their final runs before selection for the joint European Championships which will be held at Fontainebleau in July. High performance managers and coaches Tom Doherty, Debbie Byrne and Gerry Flynn were all in attendance, and through Horse Sport Ireland, announced their squads this week.

As hosts and organisers, the Deverell family staged another well-run fixture, offering riders an array of challenging yet educational tracks.

Now run as an annual rather than biannual event, Sam Deverell makes every effort to ring the changes, and while the courses ran largely over the same routes as 12 months ago, there were new features at every turn.

As everywhere in the country, the ground was on the firm side, but Deverell had been busy with his own Agrivator, and as he pragmatically remarked, “God looked after the rest.”

The weekend’s entries had been split two ways between Annaharvey and the Saturday fixture at Glaslough in Co Monaghan. Despite the former coming out well on top numerically, Sunday’s total entry of 176 still illustrated a reduction from last year. Perhaps it is because it is sandwiched in between the internationals at Tattersalls and Kilguilkey, but it led Deverell to comment, “It does just make it hard to re-invest.”