THE Association of Irish Riding Clubs’ 35th annual Festival takes place next weekend, June 7th and 8th, at the Fagan family’s Mullingar Equestrian Centre where they are currently hosting a second week of international show jumping.

“We are delighted to have over 1,920 entries, an increase of nearly 240 on last year,” said the AIRC’s chairperson, Louise Duffy. “Once again, the Association is very grateful for the generous support of long-standing sponsors The Irish Field for the dressage classes, TRI Equestrian for the show jumping classes and Horse Sport Ireland for the breed showing classes. We are also delighted to have Equipeople on board this year to support and sponsor the showing classes.”

The Irish Field dressage programme offers individual classes for all levels of riders with pairs and team competitions included over the two days. There is a class for young horses on Saturday and for veteran horses on Sunday. Also on day one, there is two Prix Caprilli classes and the musical ride while the day two timetable includes two dressage to music classes and fancy dress pairs dressage.

There is as wide a choice individually for members in the TRI Equestrian show jumping section of the Festival but, over the coloured poles, two team competitions in Sand Arena 1 will be the focus of attention.

RDS ticket

On Saturday, there will be a last chance for a club to bag a ticket for the RDS team show championship in the Premier Performance wildcard qualifier. This was won last June by Greenhills who went on to finish third at Dublin. Sunday sees the second running of the Foran Equine RC70 and RC80 team championship final won last year by Lakelands who failed by just one time fault to qualify again this year. Between flat and performance classes, there will be non-stop action over the two days in the showing section where, in one form or another, all class results lead towards four major show championships.

As proceedings come to a close on a very busy Saturday, qualifiers will contest the Carl Geisler memorial championship while the destination of the other three championship titles will be decided on Sunday.

We know they can’t win the Connemara, thoroughbred or Traditional Irish Horse classes but, given the results at the recent Balmoral Show, there will be a lot of interest in both flat and performance Irish Draughts next weekend.

For those staying onsite at the equestrian centre, the evening entertainment programme kicks off on Friday with the TopSpec-sponsored Grainne’s table quiz followed on Saturday by the Agria-sponsored music bingo. There will also be a raffle in aid of the Irish Cancer Society.