Balmoral championship - ‘allowing talent shine through’

STUART is very much involved and associated with the young event horse championship at Balmoral, a competition she was keen to foster.

“I’m not a full committee member for Balmoral but I am co-opted on to the horse committee when needed. I had for years asked for a young event horse class at the show and it was while Diane Gibson was chairperson that she thought it would be a good legacy of her time in the chair if we developed the class. ‘We’ soon became ‘I’ as Diane was very busy with all the other challenges of office.

“The competition reflects my love of correctly producing and training young horses as, through the qualifiers, we see the youngsters gaining confidence each week, allowing their talent shine through. By the time the qualified horses arrive into the Main Arena at Balmoral they have been well prepared by their riders and, as the results show, all but one horse over the past five years has completed the course in a pleasing manner.

“The jumping course is designed not to test the horse but to allow it to show off its natural talent. We bring in top judges who have vast experience in their discipline and trust them to judge the horses based on that knowledge. The concept could be improved, but I think it runs well considering the time constraints imposed on us for the Main Arena.”

Standing in the centre of that Main Arena last May on course-building duty, Adrienne had the pleasure of seeing daughter Kirsty partner the home-bred Charming Lad into second place in the five-year-old young event horse championship. The bay gelding by Carrick Diamond Lad is out of Stuart’s sadly-deceased Granshas Borrowed Charm, a home-bred mare by a brother to the Badminton winner, Word Perfect.

“She used to breed really nice, rideable horses, as did her dam Abbey (Granshas Abagail) who produced two cracking foals by the Connemara Builder’s Delight. The filly, Mocking Bird, is eventing here with amateur Kathryn Henderson while the colt, Coonawara, who Kirsty produced, is doing lots of everything with a very happy rider. He competed in the small working hunter class at Balmoral last May and jumped a really good round.

“We have two mares due to foal this year with the first being Devilishly Divine who is by Devil’s Jump, a thoroughbred that produced lots of good event horses in Cornwall, out of Rozinante, a Warmblood who won numerous broodmare showing classes.

“Kirsty is currently training the dam’s five-year-old daughter, The Devils Diamond (by Carrick Diamond Lad), and she comes in every day from riding the mare singing her praises as she’s easy, trainable, talented and an all-round lovely person. We have also retained Devilishly Divine’s two-year-old gelding by Carrick Diamond Lad while she is due on May 28th to the same sire who I like as his progeny are athletes, have good conformation, are talented and trainable.

“The other mare, Granshas Clodagh, is by the Irish draught stallion Rebel Mountain. She is due on June 10th to Tom Jones’s young stallion Carrick Quidam de Revel who has the best of Irish and European bloodlines, mixing Flagmount Diamond and Quidam de Revel. This will be her first foal.”