AFTER filling a number of top places in the Clifden High Performance Final over the last few years, Co Wicklow rider Edwina O’Connor finally won the sash last Friday after landing the feature event on the performance day at the 2018 Connemara Pony Festival with her mother Noreen’s Agharanny Minstrel.

The 16 combinations had qualified at four qualifying shows. Course designer Charles Hanley built a challenging 1.10m track of rustic fences which extended into ring two and included two doubles of banks, a combination of plank verticals and a full height joker fence.