THE stylish New Zealand rider Sam Lissington bought up a double at last week’s Millstreet international horse trials when completing on her dressage score with Nadal (29.9 penalties) in the Coral Cove CCIYH2*-S, a class she landed last year on her 2*-L winner of 2024, Mr Cookie Time.

This time, however, Lissington made an even bigger impression, as she also finished second in the six and seven-year-old class on Never Know MB who, too, finished on his first phase score (30.4). Millstreet regular, Britain’s Flora Harris slotted into third, also on her flat work mark, with the Irish Sport Horse mare Cillbhrid Mable (31.3), a Balou du Rouet bay, on whom she won a Novice class at Aston-Le-Walls last month.

Nadal, who also won a Novice class at Aston-Le-Walls on his seasonal debut, is a six-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding by Jenssen VDL out of an Indoctro mare, while Never Know MB, a six-year-old KWPN-registered mare by Hermantico, is out of the Winningmood van de Arenberg mare Never Know.

Kildare’s Edie Murray-Hayden rode two horses in this class, faring the better in fourth with Barbara Keller’s six-year-old skewbald gelding UCS Disclosure (by Diamant de Plaisir), who completed on his first phase score (31.8). So too did the Irish Sport Horse gelding Kilnamac Kasu (31.9), the seven-year-old by Kannan, who Godfrey Gibbons rides for his mother Marie Dunne.

Unfortunately for Kilkenny-based British international John Tilley, he picked up four very expensive show jumping penalties with Polly Stephens’s Wellfields Casino Royale, which saw him drop from first after dressage, where the ground jury - of Portugal’s Anibal Marianito and Ireland’s Paula Geiger – had him on 28 penalties and a clear cross-country round to sixth (32).

Only one of the 25 starters failed to finish and just two had a problem in jumping across the country.