Margie McLoone

THE Gowran Hunt Horses team of owner Pat Loughlin and rider Brian Murphy combined to win the supreme hunter championship at Dublin last year with the heavyweight gelding Fort Knocks who was then sold to The Netherlands.

They may not have anything of the chesnut’s standing in the show hunter section next week but they do have one of the top-rated cobs in the country in The Peaky Blinder who will first bid for glory in the maxi division.

A five-year-old Irish Draught by Rockrimmon Silver Diamond, the grey gelding has enjoyed considerable success this season and not just in the cob and/or breed divisions as he was champion ridden horse at Gorey and reserve champion ridden horse at Flavours of Fingal.

The Peaky Blinder was bred in Co Mayo by Sandra and Peter Noone out of a Mountain Diamond mare and it’s great to see cobs with recorded breeding. Another fully-registered ID gelding entered in next week’s maxi division is Lyndsey Wylie’s Tommie Tucker, an eight-year-old Holycross chesnut who has qualified for the ID performance championship.

Belfast’s Allie Farley has her Irish Sport Horse gelding Benediction (by the ID stallion Lislap Benedict), a winner at Royal Balmoral, Saintfield Show and Ardnacashel, entered in the maxi class, where he will be ridden by Jamie Smyth. There, he will also meet Tom and Maria McNamara’s Shanbally The Real McCoy who has had a lot of success this season.

In the heavyweight class, Smith will be on Robert Morrow’s six-year-old brown gelding Morrows Street Wise, a winner at Royal Balmoral and Saintfield Show and champion cob plus supreme ridden champion at the EquiFestival in Mullingar.

Among his rivals will be Gerard Sloan’s 10-year-old bay gelding Champagne Agent on whom Ryan Anderson takes the ride. This class was won last July by Jodie Moran and James Braddish’s 2011 mare De Douager who went on to be crowned champion.

Anderson will also be on board Christopher Gibson’s Saintfield and EquiFestival winner Benvarden State Occasion, a seven-year-old Midas Touch gelding, in the lightweight class where his opponents will include Paul O’Shaughnessy’s Chantilly Chameleon. This four-year-old won his cob and ID classes at Cork and was second in the all-Ireland Irish Draught class in Ardrahan.

Chantilly Chameleon is by Huntingfield Rebel, sire also of The Forger who was reserve cob champion for the O’Shaughnessys at Dublin back in 2011 and 2013 and who recently won the maxi cob class at the Royal International Horse Show.

Also due to start in the lightweight class is the Loughlin/Murphy exhibit, Huntington, another four-year-old who has been winning throughout the country.