HAYDEN Hankey and Ann Bassett will be back in Ring 2 to judge the working hunter horses as the 2026 Gallagher Dublin Horse Show comes to a close next Sunday.

For the first time, combinations had to qualify for this section of the show with the top five horses in each of the five classes at each of the four qualifiers securing a ticket. These qualifiers were hosted by the organisers of the Young Eventhorse Series at their established venues where some combinations contested both.

While the true amateurs lamented the fact that the qualifiers took place mid-week and the professionals were disappointed to be restricted to four horses overall at Dublin, most agreed that their introduction was needed. There should be a lot of interest in Sunday’s DAFM prize-funded classes, three of which will take place before a brief break for lunch.

Alice Copithorne, who won the opening Traditional Irish Horse class last August on Kilkeany Breeze, qualified two five-year-old home-bred mares for the class next Sunday, Marian Slattery’s Elegant Emilia (by Young Carrabawn) and Jamie Byrnes’s Castleview Lady Cruise (by Oldtown KC).

Ciara O’Connor won the four-year-old class last year on Columbia whose owner, J.J. Bowe, will be represented this time around by Patrickswell Barker. The Gortfree Curious George gelding qualified at Forth Mountain where he was ridden by the owner’s son Michael.

Riding for owner-breeders Jane and Kieran Kinsella, William Flood bids to win the five and six-year-old lightweight class for the second year running with their Dignified van’t Zorgvliet mare Toberpatrick So Dignified.

Runner-up last August, the Hurst Show Team’s 2024 supreme champion hunter, Tattygare Me Me Me, a bay daughter of Arkan, returns to do battle again under Gwen Scott.

Last year’s reserve champion hunter mare, the 2018 Rebel Mountain grey Foxcovert Dancingintherain, tops the list of entries in the older lightweight class having qualified at Scarteen in the hands of Linzi Sullivan, daughter of the mare’s owner-breeder Raymound Dowdall. Alyssa O’Neill qualified the seven-year-old Lancelot mare Dermish Coney on whom she finished fourth in the lightweight working hunter championship at last week’s Royal International Horse Show.

In the 2025 five-year-old and upwards middle/heavyweight class, the Shane McKenna-ridden Quite Content claimed the win over the Gwen Scott-partnered Tul Na Rí only for the positions to be reversed in the championship. Quite Content is an absentee this time around but Scott returns with the 2019 Glynnwood Comet gelding Tul Na Rí who is now in the ownership of Debbie Harrod.