Joy for Howard

THE excellent Balmoral Park record of owner Paula Howard and producer Davy Lyons continued in the P&O Arena on Wednesday morning when Dernahatten Out Of Touch was crowned Tourism Northern Ireland champion broodmare.

The five-year-old winner of the medium/heavyweight class is by the deceased thoroughbred sire Bienamado and was bred in Co Monaghan by Padraig McKernan out of the Creevagh Into Touch mare Tirnamona Ellie. In her class, and the championship, Dernahatten Out Of Touch stood ahead of John Roche’s 12-year-old Flagmount King mare Assagart Sapphire while that Co Wexford exhibitor won the lightweight class with his 16-year-old Assagart Travelling Solo (by The Traveller).

Howard also won the colt foal class with the champion’s first produce, who is by the thoroughbred Grennan Fort, while Roche, and Assagart Sapphire, won the fillies’ class with a daughter of Golden Master.

The winning colt was shown by Lyons’s daughter Caroline who is a veterinary nurse at Tullyraine Equine Clinic. She herself exhibited the winning trio of Zwartbles while her Beechmount Daisy won her yearling Irish Moiled heifer class and was junior champion.

Winner alright

NICKI Russell, an equine instructor at Kildalton College, paid a rewarding visit to the 150th Balmoral Show as she won the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association racehorse to riding horse class in the Main Arena early on Friday afternoon with Sizing Australia.

While the 16-year-old New Frontier gelding behaved impeccably in the class, where he always stood top of the line-up, he and others, where rather taken aback to find themselves sharing the showgrounds with ponies, donkeys, Clydesdales and hackneys!

“I only got him this time last year but knew him from the time I used to ride out at Henry de Bromhead’s,” said Russell who will aim her horse at Dublin although disappointed with her result there last August. “He spent the winter at the College where he was used as a schoolmaster for the students.”

Groom for the six-time track winner was the rider’s husband, Liam Russell.

Smyth’s delight

JAMIE Smyth, who rode Apple Jack into the reserve spot in Wednesday’s supreme hunter championship in the Main Arena, bagged a Balmoral Show title the following morning in Horse Arena 1 in the Event Technical Services riding horse class where Carraigan Stables’s Carraigan Lolita always topped the line-up ahead of Gillian Gill’s eight-year-old Stanley Grange Regal Heights gelding Rommano Believe In Me. The winning seven-year-old is by Kings Master.