CAROLINE Woods, lead physiotherapist with the Northern Ireland senior football team, is looking forward to the start of the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifiers with two home matches getting the action underway at Windsor Park on Thursday, March 21st against Estonia followed, three days later, by Belarus.
The Strabane native warmed up for the qualifiers by taking part in the Golden Button Challenge in Gloucestershire last weekend and, coming home seventh, was the highest-placed Irish female rider among the 33 finishers. There were 27 Irish riders among the 62 starters over nearly three miles and 27 fences comprising big hedges, ditches and posts and rails.
Disappointingly, Caroline didn’t win a button but this was a great effort on her part, especially as, flying in that morning, she only had time to walk part of the course. “It was probably just as well that I didn’t walk it all!” exclaimed Kildare-based Woods. “I rode the former Liz Doyle-trained Reality Dose, who Gary Carroll rode in the Challenge last year, and he was brilliant. My only real worry was getting lost. My other half (trainer Peter Maher) didn’t fare so well as he fell at the seventh.”
Peter rode the five-time chase winner Mr Mole who was bred in Co Down by the late Nicola Baird out of the Kadalko mare Emmylou Du Berlais. The 11-year-old Mr Pretender gelding, who mainly raced in the colours of J.P. McManus, is now owned by Northern-born, Yorkshire-based veterinary surgeon Brian Abbott who missed the Challenge as he was away skiing.
“Peter hunted with the Ledbury on the Friday and needed two horses for that so Kellie Rae from Sallins, who works in the yard, went over with him and all our horses and did a brilliant job with them. There was a bit of a panic as our lorry broke down but they were helped out by Peter Flood’s dad Billy.
“The Challenge was absolutely brilliant but also absolute mayhem with loose horses running everywhere! It was just like the point-to-points once were with good horsey people out for the craic with their horse,” concluded Caroline.