TWO Dressage Ireland-affiliated shows were staged last weekend, the first by the Eastern Region at Marlton on Saturday when, on a busy day, the judging duties were undertaken by Vida Tansey (List 1), Jane Whitaker (List 2), Bernie Webb (List 3a) and Lisa O’Brien (List 6).

Lorli Higgins completed a Preliminary double on her home-bred Traditional Irish Horse Mystical Meg. The 15-year-old dun mare is by the Connemara stallion Ashfield Romeo while her dam was the thoroughbred Mystic Oak (by Waajib), a winner on the flat in Germany. The combination scored 72.32% in the Webb-judged DI5A and 75.77 in the O’Brien-assessed DI6.

Deirdre Byrne recorded a cross-Grade double on her Oldenburg mare Fraulein Frizzi. Tansey awarded the pair her highest score (73.57%) in the Elementary DI55 while Whitaker did likewise in the Medium DI65 (66.25). Second (71.96) to Byrne in the DI55, Joanne Logue topped Webb’s scores in the DI52 on her Irish Sport Horse mare Little Lottie (70), a seven-year-old bay by Cormint.

Riding her ISH mare Majestic Heartbreaker, a nine-year-old daughter of Womanizer, Gilly Crawford recorded a double in the two three-runner Advanced level classes. Whitaker awarded her a score of 65.74% in the DI90 while she also had a comfortable victory (68.33) in the second of the two classes, which used the FEI Junior Preliminary test.

Cadhla Curran recorded an uncontested double in the two FEI pony rider classes on board the German riding pony HS. In the Tansey-judged team test, Curran and the eight-year-old Valdez HS gelding scored 66%, a figure which grew to 66.62 following their individual test performance before Whitaker.

There were a dozen starters in the Novice DI21 where Tansey awarded her highest score (71.21%) to the sole Category 3 rider, Hannah Fielding, for her test on the Hanoverian mare DWS Firelight, a seven-year-old Fidertanz bay. Only six combinations contested the Webb-judged DI27A where Fielding and DWS Firelight had to settle for overall second (66.21) behind Johnny McNeela and Killian Gaffney’s ISH gelding My Bishophill Rolex (68.10), an eight-year-old bay son of Cougar.

The best contested of the dedicated Junior classes was the Novice DI27A where Oscar O’Connor saw off two rivals when scoring 68.79% on board Funkstar. This six-year-old Oldenburg gelding by Foundation is owned by the rider and his mother Susan.