WHEN the Future Event Horse League finals were last held at Lambertstown in July 2011, Becky Tandy won the small event horse class (for animals between 150cms and 160cms) on Carol Gee’s five-year-old Clover Echo gelding, Bright Echo.

Missed by some more than others, the small event horse class was replaced in 2019 by the Junior/Young Rider event horse class. At the inaugural final in the RDS, Gee again owned the winner, Fernhill Cruiseaway, a five-year-old Cobra mare partnered by Kate Derwin.

As with its predecessor, the Junior/Young Rider event horse class is confined to five to seven-year-old horses and it’s a member of the 2016 foal crop who goes into next week’s Horse Sport Ireland-sponsored RDS championship in pole position, Killea Quality Cruise.

The OBOS Quality 004 gelding, who is partnered by Bryan Bourke for his father, Donal, won all three legs he contested in the Young Eventhorse Series – at Tullylish, Scarteen and Rincoola – bagging the Horse Sport Ireland-sponsored league with 30 points. The bay finished well clear of the second-placed Master Quality Imp (a seven-year-old son of the same influential Oldenburg stallion) whose 16 points were amassed under owner Susanna Cawley’s daughter, Rebecca Coonan.

Both Killea Quality Cruise and Master Quality Imp competed in CCI1*-Intro classes at Kilguilkey House this season, the former finishing 10th at the more recent event while Master Quality Imp (who was fifth in the EI110 at Hillcrest last Sunday) finished seventh at the earlier international.

LadyCraft, ridden for his father Terry by Christopher Whyte, won the qualifier at Forth Mountain where Killea Quality Cruise was an absentee. The Puissance mare displayed her wellbeing last Saturday at Punchestown where she won the HSI-sponsored EI110 class for six-year-olds on her dressage score.

Siobhan Lambert’s seven-year-old Alkaadhem gelding Murphs Legend, who finished third under the owner’s daughter Amy in the EI110 (J) at Hillcrest last Sunday, is heading to Lambertstown as winner of the Treo Eile-sponsored award for leading thoroughbred in the league.