MOST sporting organisations are keen to encourage and attract increased female participation but the Irish Pony Society could do with more male competitors like Tristan Kelly who won two working hunter titles at last weekend’s IPS National Championships in Mullingar.

Riding for his mother Lucy, Kelly ended the weekend by landing the show’s overall Mountain & Moorland championship with Garvagh Moonlight Boy, winner earlier of his Connemara and Mountain & Moorland working hunter classes before going novice Connemara working hunter champion and reserve Mountain & Moorland working hunter champion.

The Mary Tynan-bred Garvagh Moonlight Boy, who was a new ride this season for Kelly, is an eight-year-old roan gelding by Monaghanstown Boy out of the Moonlight Silver Shadow mare, Garvagh Silver Moonlight.

There is no recorded pedigree for Tinnecarrig Milo on whom Tristan won the open working hunter championship and was reserve in the 133cms Tom Robinson Gold Cup and the show’s overall working hunter championship. Earlier this year, the combination won at Balmoral and were second at the Royal Highland Show.

They have qualified for the 133cms working hunter at the Horse Of The Year show where Tristan’s eldest brother Jasper rode the now 15-year-old dun gelding in 2019.

Representing the Shillelagh Branch, Tristan also qualified for this weekend’s Connolly’s Red Mills/Irish Pony Club National Eventing Championships at Tattersalls Ireland with Garvagh Moonlight Boy. However, he is giving those a miss to join the rest of his family on a trip to Segersjö in Sweden where, riding Lucy’s Irish Sport Horse mare Agatha Raisin, Jasper is a member of the Irish team competing in next week’s European Young Rider Eventing Championships.

Two other boys I should mention are Fionn Redmond, who won the novice show pony championship with his aunt Kathy Geoghegan Curley’s five-year-old British-bred part Welsh gelding Stracathro Golden Sorbet, and Leannan Moloney, winner of the open Mountain & Moorland ridden championship on his mother Zoe Shannon’s Glynsylen Magellan, a 15-year-old Welsh gelding by Russetwood Elation.