THE finals of the Stepping Stones to Success League were held on Tuesday at Wexford Equestrian where there was no surprise when the winners of the Childeric young event horse leagues were announced, both horses having led going into the finale and having won their respective classes on Tuesday.

“A superstar!” is how locally-based Louise Codd describes her Mermus R gelding Rossa Sixteen who won the four-year-old league on 35 points ahead of Richard Ames’s KEC Maximum Joe gelding Jockeyhall Maximum Cruise (28.5). Wendy Harris’s Colandro gelding Silken Icon finished third on 27 points, just 0.5 of a point in front of Ames’s OBOS Quality 004 mare, Belline Cracking Lady.

The four finished in that order in Tuesday’s final when it was very close between the top two. Codd’s mount, who was joint-winner of the conformation and type phase, completed on a points’ tally of 223.5 while the Daniel Alderson-partnered Jockeyhall Maximum Cruise, who narrowly won the jumping phase, notched up 222.5 points.

Silken Icon’s rider, Sarah Ennis, topped the scores in the Anne Marie Dunphy-judged dressage phase but not on that bay rather on her own Caricello gelding, Stellor Deelite.

Codd previously revealed that Rossa Sixteen was the last horse she had purchased with her late partner, William Codd, in whose memory a trophy was presented on Tuesday to Mark Walsh and Leila Barker, owner and rider of the NutriScience thoroughbred league, Double Sixteen.

Having travelled to Galway, the Codds bought the then yearling from Eamonn Hogan, who had bred the bay out of his well-related Limmerick mare, Femme Fatale M2S, a half-sister to Ringfort Cruise (by Cruising) and Renkum Englishman (by Renkum Arturo).

While he has not been entered in the upcoming on-line sale (September 1st and 2nd) being organised by Pat Peare and Orla Roche of Wexford Equestrian in conjunction with Elite Auctions Ireland, it would be no surprise to learn that Rossa Sixteen had been sold before making his next public appearance.

Among those horses who have been entered in the sale are the aforementioned Double Sixteen and Waverley, who was second in Tuesday’s five-year-old final.