LAST year was some achievement - two Lanaken gold medals for ABC Saving Grace and BP Goodfellas. A new approach, decades of commitment, dedication and determination, nights spent studying bloodlines and planning best crosses, even a touch of the luck of the Irish - all of the above applied again this year to bring home four medals.

And that clean sweep in the five-year-old championship on Sunday was an encore to last year’s memo: the Irish are back. Has it ever been done before that three horses from one studbook filled the Lanaken podium? Yes. The KWPN was the first studbook to record a treble in these World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses (WBFSH) young show jumping horses championships back in 1998. That year, Loncorde B, Lynn and Larone filled the five-year-old final top places.