Margie McLoone

ASHBROOK’s excellent results at this year’s AIRC Festival in Stradbally Hall extended beyond the dressage field to the Horse Sport Ireland showing rings where Helena Fitzgerald won the supreme ridden championship with her middleweight hunter, Gentleman James.

The former Galway Blazers’ hireling always stood top of the line-up in his weight class, the second to come before judges Anne Dangerfield and Caoimhe McParland on Saturday morning. Killcarrick’s Simon Harty remained second throughout with his well-known Castana gelding My Kilmore Star while Ashbrook’s Jayne Kidd was delighted to be moved up from the end of the first line to third with her All The Diamonds gelding, Clocha Diamond.

“I bought my horse three years ago from Miley Casey and compete with him in dressage and showing,” said Curragha-based Fitzgerald, a chartered surveyor who runs her own real estate agency, REA Fitzgerald Chambers, on Dublin’s Manor Street. “We won the introduction to showing here last June so have come on a lot since then. This year we won the pairs’ class at the Northern Ireland Festival in Cavan, where we were also fourth in the ladies’ astride, and were second at the Riding Club shows at Boswell and Cheval.”

Gentleman James, on whom his owner/rider also placed fifth in the festival’s novice/expert pairs and fourth in her primary dressage section, is a 16-year-old bay gelding by Clover Dubh out of the Riberetto mare Millennium Spring. He was bred in Co Waterford by Patrick Cleary.

The ridden hunter section opened with the lightweights where Waterford’s Cheryl Cusack always topped the front line with her 2014 RDS side-saddle winner, Whitfield Jack of Hearts.

Warrington’s Helena Hennessy was brought up from fourth to take second with Cloneyhea Clancy while Copperfield’s Vincent Holian stayed third throughout on Moytura Miss Moneypenny who was having her second outing in public.

Bred in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, by Tom Carroll, the winner is an eight-year-old bay gelding by Ricardo Z out of the unraced Broken Hearted mare Swan Heart whose 2011 gelding, the Gordon Elliott-trained Jury Duty, won a handicap hurdle at Navan in February and hasn’t been out of the first four in seven starts on the track.

“The horse is going back to Dublin this year but will be ridden in the lightweights by my husband Jack,” said Cusack, business manager at Galco Steel in Waterford. “Jack, who’s an agricultural consultant, will be riding at the RDS for the first time but he was third there last year, leading our son Conor in the show hunter lead rein class!”

Disappointingly for Cheval’s Debbie Larkin, her Bonna More was moved down a place to second in the heavyweight class in favour of the 18hh Kilcotton Cross gelding Streamstown Storm, the 2015 champion four-year-old, who was ridden by his breeder Carole Smillie, a member of the Drynam club.

“He was the only foal I bred out of his dam, Esker Hill (by Ballinvella), who I used to show jump,” said Smillie, a civil engineer living in Malahide. “I do a bit of jumping with this fellow too, but only in the Riding Club, and also some working hunters. I keep him with our club secretary, Laura Snow, at her Drynam Stables during the winter but he comes home to me for the summer.”

Strangely, while other sections have a championship, the ridden hunters go directly to the supreme at the end of the day in ring one so it wasn’t surprising that the runners-up in the three weight divisions didn’t reappear. It was a lengthy wait too for those mounted up and ready as the judges took their first long break of the day before making their final deliberations.

Finally, with all showing judges present, Fitzgerald was beckoned forward on Gentleman James to receive the championship sash and Carl Geisler memorial trophy, ahead of Copperfield’s Ciaran Rossiter and the champion cob, Johnstown Boy.