SIX horses contested the latest round of the Horserail all-Ireland thoroughbred horse working hunter championship on Saturday at Lurgan Show.

Judges Kevin McGuinness (conformation) and Emer Lawlor (ride) had two unraced animals at the top of their final line-up with Bernadette Curry on Teo’s Chance standing ahead of Chloe Thompson with Alistair McDonald’s 13-year-old Tikkenan mare Beechburn Lass, a well-known combination on the thoroughbred showing circuit.

Curry, who is from Blackwatertown on the Tyrone/Armagh border and rides out in the mornings for trainer Andy Oliver, used to work for Co Meath’s Ger Lyons where Teo’s Chance was once in training. The seven-year-old bay gelding is by Teofilo out of the Daylami mare Very Nice, the dam of four winners including the listed-placed Teofilo’s Princess (also by Teofilo).

Curry was delighted to win on Saturday as she was delayed getting her horses into work this year having fractured her tail bone in a fall at Christmas time.

“Even though my horse is now qualified for the final, we will do Castlewellan and Clougher Valley for experience,” said the owner/rider who felt that both she and her horse learned a lot at a Toni Donnelly clinic earlier in the year.

There were three flat classes for thoroughbreds on Saturday which were run under the rules of Racehorse to Riding Horse Ireland.

The winner of the unraced class was the Helen Brown-partnered 11-year-old Pilsudski mare Mila Belle Coeur. Graceann Elliott won the open class, an ITM qualifier, with the former Stuart Crawford-trained Adsup, a seven-year-old gelding by Ad Valorem.

The retraining class, which was also an ITM qualifier, was won by the Neil Morrison-ridden Just For Gerry, who has caught the eye eventing. A very attractive son of Definite Article, the seven-year-old bay gelding, who pulled up in two point-to-point starts last autumn, was bred by Fiona McStay out of the King’s Theatre mare What’s Another One who comes from the family of Shinrock Paddy, Colonel Yeager, etc.