FIVE-year-old CJ Greene and his mother Jamie’s Woodroyd Go Go Girl are on a roll at present, following up their supreme pony championship success at the Show of the East earlier in the month, with victory in Sunday evening’s mini pony supreme championship at the Northern Ireland Festival in Cavan.
Warming up for this victory, the Co Meath combination first won their tiny tots lead rein class on Friday, going on to stand champion. On Sunday, they won their open show hunter pony lead rein class and, here standing reserve champion, went forward to the first of the evening’s supreme championships.
With CJ’s mother Jamie at the other end of the lead rein, Woodroyd Go Go Girl put in a hugely impressive performance under lights, which saw the 10-year-old Woodroyd Tomboy mare take the title of mini pony supreme champion. Among the audience was the rider’s older brother, Cian, who had partnered the chestnut to victory in their beginner workers class on Friday, going reserve champion, and his father, Charles.
The reserve supreme was another British-bred pony, the open Mountain and Moorland mini champion Carwgwyn Finality. This 12-year-old roan gelding by Arad Tenacity was ridden by Co Galway’s Nicole O’Shaughnessy for her mother, Imelda.
CJ was too young to ride at the Dublin Horse Show last year, but that is a target now very much in his sights. However, his next public appearance on the British-bred Woodroyd Go Go Girl, who is out of the Dartmoor mare Shilstone Rocks South Westerly (by Hixton Hurricane), will be in the lead rein class at Balmoral and there will be plenty of Irish Pony Society shows to keep them busy before Dublin.