THE Kildare North Leinster Area of the Irish Pony Society held its summer show recently at Tattersalls Ireland, where the sun shone all day - which was just as well, as the action in the main working hunter ring started at 8.30am and finished very nearly 12 hours later.

While not on site as long as the chief organisers and some of the many volunteers required to run a show of this size, it was still a lengthy session for Scottish judges Karen Slight and Phillipa MacInnes and their Irish counterparts Gill Glynn, Hayley Patterson, Rachel Bennett Hamilton and Tony Ennis.

As usual, this annual fixture was run in conjunction with the Tattersalls Ireland July Show, so young riders had the opportunity of seeing some of the country’s top senior showing and show jumping riders competing in other parts of the Co Meath grounds. If they had time, that is, as the organisers of the pony show offered a large number of classes on the flat, over jumps and in-hand.

Busy in various areas of the show during the day, David and Anna Byrne and their daughters Jennifer and Katie gathered together in the early evening at the working hunter ring, where Co Tipperary’s Chloe Doyle won the Anna Byrne supreme working hunter championship on Annabel Hillman’s Tullohea Tic Tac. Twelve-year-old Chloe was presented with the Anna Byrne Best Friends Trophy and a €500 training bursary.

Doyle and her 133cm class winner Tullohea Tic Tac progressed to the evening’s finale when finishing reserve in the novice working hunter pony championship to the 153cm class second, the Connemara gelding Gypsy Junior, a Coill Rua Champ 10-year-old, who was ridden for his Co Wicklow owner Lucy Kelly by her son Ned.

Also through were the champion and reserve from the open working hunter section, where Doyle and Tullohea Tic Tac, a 13-year-old piebald gelding, first defied their inexperience to claim the 133cm class. These were the 153cm class winner, the Aoibhinn Ruane-ridden Dartans Atom Man, and the 143m class winner Rineen Millers Melody. The latter, a 15-year-old Connemara mare by I Love You Melody, was ridden by Isla Coad for Jane Hancock.

This supreme championship wasn’t decided on the flat only, as the four ponies each had to jump three fences chosen by the judges who finally awarded the title to Doyle and Tullohea Tic Tac. “Annabel offered Chloe the ride on Tic Tac for the season at the end of last year,” revealed the successful rider’s mother Anne. “He’s a really nice stamp of a working hunter pony. Chloe and Tic Tac are now heading for Dublin, as is my other daughter Lucy with Whos Jardan B.

“Lucy had a pole down at Tatts, but ended the day on a brilliant note as Aoibhinn Ruane had two ponies through to the show’s supreme championship and gave Lucy the ride on Dynamite Replay, who won!”