IRELAND won the international Connemara performance hunter challenge for the third year in a row at the Dublin Horse Show last Sunday but, on this occasion, had to hold off two teams to do so.

The home quartet comprised Alicia Devlin Byrne with her Wednesday winner, Aidan Jones’s eight-year-old Ashfield Romeo stallion Block Blizzard (267 points), Emma Stuart on Hazel Valentine’s 11-year-old Gwennic de Goariva mare Secret Queenie (256), Caoimhe Curran on the family-owned Charlie Of Blakehill (265), a similarly-aged gelding by Coosheen Stormboy, and Eimear Murphy on her father Paddy’s 2011 Cashelbay Cruise gelding, Doire Mhainagh Robbie (256).