IN her first season competing under Eventing Ireland rules, Kate Walsh, an active member of the Tipperary Branch of the Irish Pony Club, won the EI100 (J) league with Clare Corballis’ Connemara Pony, Beechtree Watchful (62 points).

Walsh had 18 points to spare over Maya Byrne and Kim O’Gorman’s Irish Sport Horse gelding Wolf Pack (44), a home-bred, 11-year-old bay by Harlequin du Carel, with Georgina Pettit finishing a point adrift in third with her mother Marguerite’s traditionally-bred BCL Dynamic (43), a six-year-old home-bred ISH mare by Columcille Diamond Boy.

Beechtree Watchful, a 12-year-old grey by Mirah’s Oyster Bandit, was bred in Co Wexford by Adrian Morris out of the Templebready Bo’sun mare Woodlawn Coolagh. He was a show jumper up to 2018 with first Melissa Joyce and then members of the Lynch family.

Last year, he and Walsh came into their own in Connemara performance classes (they finished fifth in their class at Dublin) and were on the Tipperarys’ winning Intermediate team at the IPC/Connolly’s Red Mills National Championships at Tattersalls Ireland. This season, Walsh’s main ride with the IPC was Corballis’ 17-year-old chesnut gelding Lisheen Fork Lightning on whom she finished second in the Connolly Red Mills Open league and joint-sixth in this EI100 (J) league on 32 points.

Co Wexford’s Oscar O’Connor, who was on the Irish team at the Pony European Dressage Championships at Pilisjászfalu, Hungary, in August with Top Hero 2, juggled his eventing and dressage careers and mounts all season.

Under EI rules, he moved from Pony to Junior company in mid-summer and saw out the campaign with an EI100 (J) win at Kilguilkey House (3) in August on Susan Cloney’s ISH gelding Jumping Jack Flash, a nine-year-old chesnut son of Jack Of Diamonds.

Others to win at this level in the second half of the season were Lucy Kerrigan with her father David’s ISH mare Avalon Heatvale, a nine-year-old by Camillo VDL, and Ciara O’Neill with her mother Teresa’s Connemara gelding Oxview Jasper, a seven-year-old grey by Tempo Active Atlas.