SATURDAY’s Carr & Day & Martin open working hunter pony championship at last week’s Balmoral Show was won by Elizabeth Cooke riding her aunt Katie Tobin’s Connemara gelding Tawnagh Lad who was purchased from the Donworth family in 2022.

Fourteen-year-old Cooke and the 10-year-old Classiebawn Black Jack grey, who were jumping their first working hunter round since Iverk Show last August, won their 153cm class. The in-form partnership of Evie Kennedy and her mother Maeve’s Dublin champion Little Dromin Phoenix, a 16-year-old Connemara gelding by Lettermuckoo Lad topped the final line-up in the 143cm class (and went reserve champion) as did Freddie Greene on board Hannah Horgan’s 21-year-old Stockholm Secret Envoy (by Rotherwood Secret Agent) in the 133cm class.

With Balmoral out of the way, Cooke can now concentrate on next week’s trip to England with Tawnagh Lad as members of the large Irish Pony Club squad set to compete in the Tetrathlon Junior home international. She is obviously very dedicated to that sport as, back home in Kilkenny late on Saturday night, she was at Tetrathlon training at 8am on Sunday.

Cooke is coached by Louise Lyons whose daughter Nancy Lyons Teehan finished reserve in the working hunter starter stakes championship on board Dartans Seoda Ban who had stood second in his class to the Julia Kerr-partnered Tyussul Quartz. The champion was the cradle stakes winner, the Clara O’Donnell-partnered Rhydfelin Count Down.