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.

“I wasn’t too sure if I’d jump him after his exertions in the Main Arena on Thursday but he had plenty of fuel in the tank on Friday morning so we decided to go ahead,” said the winning rider, James Smyth. “This is a really nice, easy-going, straightforward horse and nothing seems to faze him.”

Standing reserve for the second year in a row was Co Meath’s Jennifer Byrne and her 12-year-old grey gelding Master Peace, who recorded one of just three clear rounds in the seven-year-old and upwards class, while the four-year-old class was won by Kerry Finlay’s The Ladies Choice, an ISH gelding by OBOS Quality 004.

North Co Dublin’s Natasha Byrne partnered her mother Marie’s Tisrara Captain to victory in the Event Technical Services cob working hunter class which was held on Saturday morning. The rider also competes this 10-year-old bay gelding in EI100 (J) company.

Staged in memory of the late George Boyd, the following small horse working hunter class, which attracted an entry of 32, was won by Grainne Moore’s nine-year-old Ricardo Z gelding Shannaghmore Lothario.