After an excellent win on Wednesday in the 1.50m two-phase with Picolo, Ireland’s Darragh Kenny maintained the high standard in the Mercedes-Benz Nations Cup at Aachen on Thursday night in front of a capacity crowd of 40,000.

This time riding Imothep, Kenny recorded four faults in the opening round and a single time fault in the second round. However the Irish team performance was patchy and the team finished in seventh place out of eight competing nations.

Belgium won the competition on a final team score of six faults, ahead of the United States on eight faults and the Netherlands on 10 faults. The home side Germany and Canada finished on 12 each, followed by France (17), Ireland (26) and Switzerland (37).

The Belgian and German teams had been neck and neck on zero faults each after the first round but a bad fall at the water for Germany’s Katrin Eckermann, whose horse Firth Of Lorne put a foreleg in the water and stumbled on landing.

Both horse and rider escaped uninjured but their retirement meant that all three scores from the remaining German riders had to be counted. With four faults apiece, this put the team out of the reckoning.

The Mercedes-Benz Nations Cup began at 7.30pm and continued until the prize giving at 10.45pm, which made for a late evening but the transition from brilliant sunshine to floodlights was made seamlessly.

The Irish team was the only one in which every rider incurred time faults in both rounds. In the first round, Darragh Kenny and Imothep recorded four faults, while Shane Breen and Golden Hawk picked up 13 faults. Cameron Hanley and Living the Dream incurred a single time fault, while Denis Lynch and All Inclusive NRW recorded six faults.

With a team score of 11 faults after round one, they were clearly out of the reckoning.

Darragh Kenny and Shane Breen both improved in their second round performances, recording one fault and six faults respectively but Cameron Hanley and Denis Lynch both disimproved, incurring eight faults and 18 faults respectively.

Speaking afterwards, Ireland’s show jumping team manager Robert Splaine said he had used the Aachen Nations Cup, which is not part of the Ireland's 2014 Furusiyya Nations' Cup campaign as an opportunity to field three new combinations at five-star team level (Kenny and Imothep, Breen on Golden Hawk and Cameron Hanley with Living The Dream), with Denis Lynch as anchorman with All Inclusive NRW.

“Three new combinations have emerged in recent times and it was great that the chance to compete at Aachen arose as this was a good opportunity for them to show their skills at such a high level of team jumping. It was a very tough course, so much so that the German team could only manage a fourth place on their home ground,” said Splaine.

“I learned a lot tonight, and it gave me encouragement for both the short and long term. Darragh Kenny and Imothep came over from the US and delivered two very good rounds on the big stage, while Cameron Hanley had an excellent first round with Living the Dream, picking up just one time fault, and Shane Breen and Golden Hawk had a marked improvement in the second round, with just one fence down and two time faults.

“Overall, I’m very pleased that we came here, for it is one of the best testing grounds in the world,” he added.

Meanwhile, Kenny is unlikely to forget his first trip to Aachen in a hurry. The 26-year-old rider, who has been on a winning streak in America and Canada, clearly packed his form in his suitcase for the trip to Europe. He notched up two wins in his first three days at the show winning the 1.50m two-phase with Picolo and won the second qualifier of the Sparkasse Youngsters Cup with the eight-year-old KWPN stallion Chin Quidam VDL.

By all accounts Kenny is the talk of the town among the CHIO Aachen crowd, although he has had to explain on a number of occasions that he is not related to the late great show jumper Paul Darragh, as some believed.

In other Irish results, Shane Breen finished third in the 1.55m jump-off with Confident Of Victory, while Thomas Ryan finished eighth in the 1.50m class and Cameron Hanley took seventh in the young horse class, both of which were won by Kenny.