WE don’t usually cover the TopSpec amateur classes in these national one-day reports but this week we have to mention the three winners at Maddybenny, commencing at EI90 level.

There were 11 starters in Saturday’s class but only two completed on their dressage scores, the runner-up Ruth Lyttle, with the nine-year-old skewbald mare Remember My Colours (34.3 penalties), and the winner, Nanno Fitzsimons riding Sailors Consort (30.3), another mare but a year older and by Sailorman.

Nanno, a sister of one of the hosts for the day, Eavan White, used to event in the early 1990’s but gave it up to raise a family and for many years was a ‘Pony Club mother’.

She returned to the sport last year with the aim of qualifying for the National Championships. That she did and while things didn’t go exactly to plan, the Donnybrook resident, who keeps her horse in Co Wicklow, was delighted to have met her target.

This season has seen a couple of blips (or rider error) on the combination’s record so, when taking a family holiday recently, Nanno sent Sailors Consort up to Sarah Ennis who gave the owner/rider some lessons on her return. The improvement was immediately evident on Saturday as the pair recorded an all-the-way success.

With her one real ‘horsey’ daughter Ellen now in Australia, Nanno travels to most events on her own and made the most of her journey north last weekend by staying with Eavan and her husband Philip for three nights, hacking out on Sunday and competing in the Causeway Coast Showjumpers Club’s show on Bank Holiday Monday.

BACK-TO-BACK WINS

Society steward Denis Currie recorded back-to-back wins from just two outings at EI100 level on Saturday with his new mount, Arodstown Aramis.

As he had competed with the great Bering Strait from August 2007 to early September last year, it was always going to be difficult for Denis to source a another good mount to event.

However, he appears to have done so in the 12-year-old Shannondale Sarco St Ghyvan gelding who, ridden by Jamie Nolan, represented Ireland in the young riders’ European championships in Poland in 2015.

Florence Campbell had three rides at Maddybenny on Saturday, two in the TopSpec CNC1* class which the Belfast solicitor won on the 22-year-old Anvil Diamond who was having his second outing of the campaign. “The old boy did it well!” reported a delighted Campbell.