THREE other regions of Dressage Ireland held shows last weekend starting on Saturday at Gransha where the Northern Region ran the seventh of its eight winter league qualifiers.

Ivor Harper (List 4) and Angelene Nicholson (List 2) shared the judging duties with the latter awarding her highest score of the day in the Elementary BD55 to the sole combination of Denise Kelly Rice and Pamela Wilson’s Westfalian mare Forvanna (78.39%), a six-year-old by Formidable.

At Medium level, Nicholson had Dale Roberts and Amelia McFarland’s home-bred Irish Sport Horse gelding Kingston Rua (67.76%) at the top of her leaderboard in the five-runner BD61. However, in the DI77, where there were four starters, she had Roberts and the Furstenball seven-year-old lying second (66.14) to Mark Robinson and Master Caledonia (70.57), Debbie Burns’s 10-year-old black Hanoverian gelding by Metall.

The largest class of the day was the nine-strong Novice BD38 where Lisa Dundee achieved Harper’s highest score on board Patricia Connon’s home-bred ISH mare Roundthorn Nice N Easy (74.19%), a five-year-old daughter of Formidable. Here, this combination finished ahead of Craig Hills riding High Hopes Tuxita (71.45) but, in the DI24A, the opposite had been the case with Hills, a Hillsborough-based BHS Stage 3 coach, achieving a score of 71.76 on ‘Rita’ ahead of Dundee and Roundthorn Nice N Easy (70.17).

High Hopes Tuxita, who has won 27 of her 32 DI points this year, is a seven-year-old black mare registered with the Anglo European Studbook. She is by Maximillian Voltlucky out of the Dutch Warmblood mare Riana (by Jumper ZFDP).