WHILE the Barrier Animal Health Spring Festival at Castle Irvine, Necarne, was the focus of most members of Area 17 of The Pony Club last weekend, a squad of 11 travelled over to Grantham in England for the UK Pony Club winter triathlon finals in running, swimming and shooting.

There was a brilliant result at Junior level, as the Area 17 quartet of Andrew Wishart (Iveagh), Sam Staats Howard (Route), Annabel McKeown (Killultagh) and Emma Stewart (Killultagh) saw off the challenge of 21 other squads to win the team competition. The winners scored 9,258 points to finish immediately ahead of Area 5 (9,209), with Area 14 slotting into third (9,155).

There was further cause for celebration as Sam claimed the individual boys’ honours on a total of 3,128 points while Annabel topped the final leaderboard of the individual girls’ competition on 3,149 points. A third individual win came through Seskinore’s Patrick Williams who, on 3,112 points, topped the scores in the Open boys’ competition. Patrick was on an Open team with Kai McAllister (Mid Antrim) and Ciara Cormack (Mid Antrim).

At Minimus level, personal bests were recorded at the Grantham Meres Leisure Centre by Henry Coote (Seskinore), Daniel Stewart (East Antrim), Sarah Wilson (East Antrim) and Khaleesi McWatters (Iveagh).

Attention now turns to Tetrathlon with the Iveagh Branch running a Tetrathlon training day, which is open to all Pony Club members, at the Moira Equestrian Centre on Sunday next, April 7th. There will be cross-country riding instruction, target pistol instruction and run training.

A member of last weekend’s successful Junior team at the UK Pony Club winter triathlon finals, Andrew Wishart, has been selected to represent Northern Ireland in the Tetrathlon competition at the Royal Windsor Horse Show (May 1st to 5th). Also selected are his Iveagh teammate, Una McClelland, and Fermanagh’s Tori Lilly.