Sally Parkyn

THE ever-popular Grove event staged a full quota of sponsored classes last weekend, together with the opening legs of the Irish Sport Horse studbook eventing series. Fittingly, the parkland venue looked at its very best in the sunshine, as did the well-presented and largely revamped cross-country tracks.

Huge efforts had gone into the ground preparation as not only had all the tracks been freshly mown, they had also been thoroughly aggrovated. Sparkling new boards in the dressage arenas and flags at the entrance were other finishing touches, leading organiser Rosemary Ponsonby to comment: “I have to thank so many people for their hard work, but especially John Sheehan, John Smith and Aiden O’Meara of the farm management team here at Grove, and of course our designers Alan and Paul Brady, Van de Vater and our course builder Peter Ponsonby.”

NEW FEATURES

Among the new features was a new starting area to the cross-country course. This worked extremely well in all classes and opened onto an entirely new loop of seven fences before re-joining the main park at the feature water.

Other main differences in the one and two-star classes included a beautifully-built huntsman’s close complex and an influential narrow log combination two from home.

One of the trademarks of Grove is the presentation of three beautiful trophies. The first went to the winner of the O/CNC**, while the Croan trophy – a sculpture by Mona Croome-Carroll, was awarded to the leading local rider and EI 90 amateur victor, Charles Blackmore. The final trophy, which is presented annually in memory of popular horseman Kevin Smyth was presented to EI 100 pony winner Mary Smiddy.