TOM Nestor is knuckling down to his studies having entered the first year of the Leaving Cert cycle, but does so on the back of an excellent first full season in Junior company with his father David’s Irish Sport Horse gelding Cooley Diamond Dancer.

Seventeen-year-old Nestor and the 2012 Jack Of Diamonds grey topped the 2023 Eventing Ireland/Yeomanstown Stud EI110 league with 70 points. This left the Kildare combination well clear of Molly O’Connor with Sarah Hughes’ 18-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding Alcatraz (42), who only joined up in mid-June, and fellow Northern Region member Alex O’Hare and her mother Donna’s nine-year-old KWPN-registered mare Jerona HBC (40).

Cooley Diamond Dancer was bred in Co Wicklow by Claire McDonnell out of the Cruising mare Lucy Blue. The latter is dam also of the Heritage Fortunus gelding Sapphire Blue B (CCI4*-L) and was a full-sister to the Army Equitation School’s superb show jumper Mo Chroi, who so often featured on Irish Nations Cup teams at five-star level.

Under the name Dancing With Diamonds, Cooley Diamond Dancer started his competitive career here as a show jumper from 2016 to 2019. He was competed under both codes in 2020 and 2021 by Britain’s Pru Dawes until joining the Nestors last autumn. He and Tom won five EI110 (J) events in the first half of the year and, while they had a very disappointing result in the CCIJ2*-L at Millstreet, they were selected for the Junior European championships in Monitelbretti, Italy, where, on their dressage score, they finished best of the Irish in 14th place.

Having worked in the past at Cooley Farm in Co Wicklow, Nestor spread his wings a bit wider during his Transition Year and spent three months in central Scotland at the Perthshire yard of British international Wills Oakden, where he got to ride the latter’s Badminton horses. For 2024, the plan is for Nestor and Cooley Diamond Dancer to qualify for a 3* and hopefully get back on the Junior team. He and father David are also on the lookout for a young horse to compete.

Other EI110 (J) winners during the second half of the season that we hadn’t a chance to mention prior to this were Isobella Donohue with Kirsty Dobie’s ISH gelding Poynstown Cubby, a 12-year-old bay by Mermus R, and Jessica Reid with her mother Martha’s bay gelding Ballyorney Bubbles, a seven-year-old bay by Omega Star.