KILDARE’S Alyssa O’Neill brought three horses to last week’s Balmoral Show, where she started with her show jumper, the 2018 Sligo Candy Boy gelding DS Candescent, who was the highest-placed of his generation when third in the Spillers six- and seven-year-old championship on Wednesday.

The other two both competed in Friday morning’s Pure Jump-sponsored Balmoral ‘Star of the Future’ five-year-old performance horse championship, where O’Neill, who is marketing manager with Equilume, won on Dermish Coney and finished fourth with Liam Lynskey’s home-bred DS Are You With Me gelding, DS Are You Tom.

Bred in Co Clare by Susan Moloney, the winning chesnut Irish Sport Horse mare by Lancelot is the first foal out of Quality Cruising (by OBOS Quality 004). This is the family of another Lancelot mare in Colacentric, on whom O’Neill finished second in the CCI4*-S at Ballindenisk in September 2021.

“We bought the winner as an unbroken three-year-old in August or September 2022 through Brian Cleary, who is related to Susan Moloney,” revealed O’Neill. “We knew she was going to need time, so we didn’t do a lot with her last year, just a few RDS qualifiers and a bit of jumping. This year, she is jumping up to 1.10m, did an EI100 at Hillcrest and qualifiers for this championship at Hazeldene and The Meadows.

“I’m bringing both the mare and Are You Tom to Millstreet for the Burghley young event horse qualifier, which I think is a very nice class, and then we will do the Young Eventhorse Series qualifiers for Dublin and a bit of eventing.”

The Balmoral finals were judged by Lt Col Tom Freyne, Officer Commanding of the Army Equitation School, whose winner of the six- and seven-year-old championship was Somerville Springheeled, a traditional ISH gelding ridden for his Co Meath owner-breeder, John Simpson, by Crossgar’s Jonny Steele. The Uskerty Diamond Lad seven-year-old is out of a non-winning thoroughbred mare by Footstepsinthesand.

“John approached me in October or November time 2022 to ride the horse and I agreed,” said Steele, who finished fourth on the bay in the same competition last year.

“This is a real nice horse, a serious horse to jump and gallop,” said Steele, who is also bringing his Balmoral winner to Millstreet next week, but for the CCI2*-L. “He’s on the market but, if not sold, I’d be happy to keep going up the grades with him,” concluded the Riverhill Stud rider.