LIMERICK show jumper Paul O’Shea won his first five-star Grand Prix at the Longines Palm Beach Maters in Wellington, Florida, last Friday evening aboard the Tequestrian Farms LLC-owned Imerald van’t Voorfof.

Some 44 combinations started over the 1.60m $210,000 Longines Grand Prix, which was designed by Tipperary’s Alan Wade, and 15 of those made it through to the jump-off. Despite the number of clears, the second round was tense and only three were able to keep the momentum and produce double clears.

Mid-way through the jump-off class, O’Shea and the 11-year-old Emerald-sired gelding produced just the second clear round and shot to the top of the leaderboard when breaking the beam in 36.03 seconds, despite O’Shea losing his reins over the third fence.

However, he had a nervous wait as veterans of the sport followed him and last into the arena, USA’s Olympian Margie Engle and the brilliant Royce came closest to stealing his thunder. Their clear round in 36.78 seconds was good enough for second place, ahead of Columbia’s Juan Manuel Gallego and Coulash van de Broy Z (0/0 39.36).

“I lost my rein after fence three, and it took me awhile to get organized again, so I did not get the distance that I wanted,” O’ Shea said afterwards, reflecting on his round. “But Imerald tried even harder, and he stayed on track, so I have to give him credit there.”

Speaking about his tactics, O’Shea added: “I just really rode it as hard as I could. The second-to-last fence had come down a lot, and I thought ‘That’s the one to watch out for.’ I had it in my head to just really go, because it probably doesn’t help to think like that, so I thought, ‘I’m just going to go at it,’ and he jumped it great. All I thought was, ‘Keep going; Margie (Engle) is behind me.’”

For a second, Engle thought she may have got the victory. “I know that Paul is always fast, and my horse is not the quickest in the air. He spends a lot of time in the air, so when I finished, I didn’t know if I had caught him or not,” she said afterwards.

Mayo’s Cormac Hanley placed fourth in Thursday’s 1.55m Grand Prix qualifier class. He was among just four clears in the first round of the class with VDL Cartello, but decided to save his horse for Sunday’s Nations Cup competition, where the 21-year-old was making his senior team debut.

NATIONS CUP

Michael Blake’s team were out of luck in the Nations Cup, finishing fourth out of the six teams at the beautiful Deeridge venue, where victory went to Mexico.

Cork’s Shane Sweetnam got Ireland off to a perfect start in round one, jumping clear with Indra van de Oude Heihoef, before Hanley and VDL Cartello finished with just one fence down towards the end of the course.

O’Shea rode his WEG championship horse Skara Glen’s Machu Picchu to pick up four faults, while Co Down’s Conor Swail and Rubens LS La Silla also came home on a score of four. This left Ireland on an eight fault total after the first round, in a share of second place with the USA, with Mexico leading the way on a zero score.

Sweetnam finished with one fence down second time out, while Hanley repeated his four fault score from the first round. O’Shea and Skara Glen’s Machu Picchu kept all the poles standing on their second outing but picked up one time fault. Swail was the discard score with 12 faults, leaving Ireland on a team total of 17 faults.

Victory went to a young Mexican team with an average age of just 24 after they finished with just four faults. Israel finished as runners-up with nine faults, while the home team from the USA took third place on the podium with 12 faults. Ireland finished ahead of Canada in fifth and Colombia in sixth.

“Coming up from our team’s win in Dublin, we knew that we had a good team – a great team – great riders and great horses,” said Eugenio Garza Perez, the most experienced of the four, who is trained by Eddie Macken. “These three riders are amazing. They ride much more than their age, and we really pulled together and pulled out the win.”

CHILDREN ON HORSES

Irish under 14 riders travelled to the Palm Beach Masters to take part in the Children on Horse division, where plenty of top results were recorded.

Ciaran Foley was a winner in Friday’s 1.10m Table A aboard Evolien, before finishing runner-up in Sunday’s Grand Prix with Cheval d’Espoir Z. Foley’s clear in a time of 30.88 seconds against the clock was one hundredth of a second slower that American winner Zayna Rizvi and Calvaton Z (0/0 30.87).

Sarah Fitzgerald jumped one of four double clear rounds to finish in fourth place with Riva (0/0 33.72). Marta Hughes Bravo won Thursday’s 1.10m aboard Arthanne de Cacao, ahead of Kristyn McGuckian with River Cat.