WORKING hunter competitions are very popular in Northern Ireland and the programme for this discipline at Balmoral has been extended over recent years to reflect this.

Friday’s champion of the Lymm Truckwash age classes was also the show’s middleweight hunter champion, and reserve supreme, My Diamond Solitaire. This traditionally-bred 2017 Irish Sport Horse gelding by Balief Guy, who topped the line-up in the five and six-year-old class, was bred by his Crossgar owner, Karen King, out of the Bright Diamond mare, Diamonds Joy.