I DON’T know if I was totally enamoured with the typeface used in the 2023 Dublin Horse Show catalogue, but I do know that I was very disappointed to find that the organisers had dropped the names of winners of each class over the previous five years.

Many exhibitors in the showing sector believe that if you’ve won with a horse, or pony, at Dublin, you should never go back with the same animal, but others think differently, while it’s always interesting to see if the same owners can produce different horses to the very high standard required each season.

Daphne Tierney’s name appeared in these class results multiple times, particularly in the show hunter section with the many Bloomfield prefixed horses produced and ridden for her by Jane Bradbury.

Disappointingly, the highly successful combination have no ridden horses to show this year. Nor is there any animal lurking under another owner’s name, such as the Tierney-bred Bloomfield Watergate who, in the hands of Bradbury, won the lightweight championship, the four-year-old championship and the supreme hunter championship for the Co Wexford-born, US-based veterinary surgeon Brendan Furlong last August.

All to play for

Co Kildare’s Nicola Perrin is most definitely on form heading to Dublin, having recently won the hunter championship at the Tattersalls Ireland July Show on Solsboro Zeus, who was previously crowned winner of the Connolly’s Red Mills hunter champion of champions at Barnadown. Among those who could accompany the 2020 middleweight son of Dignified van’t Zorgvliet to the Ballsbridge showgrounds is the four-year-old small hunter Stoneman Team Spirit, a gelding by Sundance Diamond, and the similarly-aged Ballarin Boudica, an Offaly Clover mare, who has been collecting championship sashes all season.

Having finished reserve to Solsboro Zeus at Tattersalls and Barnadown, Deirdre and John Burchill will be happy that their five-year-old lightweight gelding Ballard Bridge Boy won’t have to face Perrin’s four-year-old until Saturday should they both advance to the championship judging in the Main Arena.

Aubrey Chapman, who finished reserve supreme last year on the middleweight champion Caseys Expresso, has plenty of strings to his bow again this season including his home-bred four-year-old lightweight gelding Thunder Storm, a grey by Bannvalley Silver Dance.

The Jamie Smyth-produced Endeavour R, last year’s Dublin heavyweight champion, had to give best to Brian Murphy’s charge Madra Rua in the championship at Balmoral in May. However, the 2016 Cavalier Royale gelding is sure to be one of the 19 horses and one pony rumoured to have been entered by Smyth for next week’s show, where the ridden hunters are due to be judged by Margaret Hopkins and Charles Upham (lightweights), Ian Stark and Penny Hollings (middleweights) plus Wayne Thorneycroft and David Machin (heavyweights).