THE North and South Munster Regions of Dressage Ireland held a joint show last Saturday at the O’Donnell family’s Hillcrest Equestrian Centre in the Glen of Aherlow where the Galtee mountains provided a stunning backdrop for the day’s action.

Gwynth Lewis, List 1 with British Dressage, judged all but one of the classes from Novice level upwards and at that lower level she faced a larger turn-out in the long arena for the DI 24A than Jillie Rogers (DI List 3) did in the short arena for the DI23.

Category 1 rider Vitaliy Halstyan topped Rogers’ leaderboard on 72.10% with Emotivo De Aboin who was making his DI debut. A seven-year-old Pura Raza Espanola (PRE) gelding by Digital, the grey is out of the Iluso XV mare Ilusa XLVIII and was bred in Spain by Hernando Aboin.

Emotico De Aboin is owned jointly by Halstyan and Grainne Murphy who told Irish Horse World how they came by the horse whose stable name is Hank.

“We imported him from Southern Spain in 2022 after an intense search for ‘the one’. We bought him in December 2021 as a stallion and had him castrated over there. He has a very well regarded sire in Digital. Hank had some basic dressage training in Spain but very little and had never competed – this is very common in Spain.

“He has a great mind and when he is schooling he puts on his ‘business’ hat and focuses on his work. Vitaliy and Hank have formed a great bond and I look forward to seeing where this very talented pair go in the future.”

Halstyan and Emotivo De Aboin only scored 65.83% in the long arena where Lewis’ winner on 68.67 was Category 2 rider Sophia Mackey with the Scottish Warmblood gelding Wagner V.U., a 20-year-old bay by Ludwig.

Elementary

At Elementary level, Lewis was taken by the work of Carrick-On-Suir’s Rachel Dowley on GFL Nava (69.26%) in the DI51 but more so by that of Owen Smyth and his longtime ride, Dark Site (70.19). Local rider Smyth and his 19-year-old black Hanoverian gelding by Don Frederico also topped the final leaderboard in the BD57 on 68.93.

Lewis’ Medium winners were Elizabeth Frayling and her eight-year-old Oldenburg mare Bedelia (66.29%), a daughter of Bordeaux, in the DI77 and Clíona Ní Liatháin and her ISH mare MJI Lady Alceis (66.32), a 10-year-old Antaeus bay, in the BD73.

Three combinations came before Lewis in the sole Advanced Medium class where the highest score (66.91%) was recorded by Bethany Mackey and her Dutch Warmblood mare Kalahari, an eight-year-old bay by Ferguson.

Disappointingly, there were just single entries in the Intermediate, Anne Marie Dunphy and her ISH gelding LEB Hugo (63.09), a 10-year-old by Woodlander Rockstar, and in the four-year-old young horse class, viz Rachel Dowley with her Anglo European Studbook-registered gelding Gentleman Jack B.S. (74), a chesnut by Godrics Campeggio.

Clodagh Walsh and her 13-year-old Connemara mare Knockavalley Mai (by Kingstown Fionn) were the only starters in the Jillie Rogers-judged FEI para Grand Prix tests where they scored 73.54 in A and 72.50 in B.

Jumping breeding

Rogers started her day by judging the Preliminary DI18 in the long arena where she awarded her highest score of 75.21% to Co Galway’s Padraig Flanagan and Gerry O’Reilly’s Irish Sport Horse mare Fabia HSH. This six-year-old newcomer by Elvis ter Putte was bred by Hadley Sport Horses out of the 2001 Dutch Warmblood mare Utha. The latter, a daughter of Iroko was imported into Ireland in 2010 and competed here by Svan Hadley.

On 73.54% with Ilfons, Amy Jane Kinane was second among the Category 1 riders to Flanagan but she and her Dutch Warmblood gelding had earlier topped the scores on 78.39 in the DI 5A which was judged by Shelley Lombard (List 6).

Lombard’s winners of the Trailblazer classes were Aoife Collins on Sopwith Pup (68.21%) in the Junior Preliminary class in the short arena, Alexandra Economou on Bóidín (60.71) in the Introductory Test C and Ally Gabbett with her new ride, the well-known Connemara gelding Oh Dakota Justice (66.58) in the Under 12s’ Preliminary.