SATURDAY evening’s six-bar class at Mullingar International attracted a lot of interest from spectators. It’s a competition not often seen in Ireland, as it requires a very large arena to have six fences two strides apart in a straight line.

To facilitate this Mullingar, as some other shows have done, broke the line in two with four fences in one line and then two in another.

The class had five starters. After five rounds of jumping, Francis Derwin and Quinici Quality and Sven Hadley aboard Phenomene Bleu VDM shared the win, each having kept a clean sheet throughout.

Third place went to Paddy O’Donnell riding Alberta Capital’s Kilcorig Elysium (Cornet Obolensky x Camiro de Haar Z), bred by Nigel Jackson, after a fence down in round three. Hadley and his other mount, Make it Easy, finished in fourth place.

Francis Derwin, joint winner of thesix-bar at Mullingar International \ Laurence Dunne jumpinaction.net

Two fences

Speaking after the class, Derwin commented: “The first two rounds consisted of two fences and then you came round to jump the other four in a separate line.

“For the next four rounds, we left out the first line and just jumped the second line of four. The fences went up gradually and, by the final round, the last part stood at 1.80m.

“Quinici Quality is a nine-year-old mare we bought last September. She is by Cornet Obolensky, out of Chanel, by Crawford and was formerly ridden by Anna Smith.

“We’ve been taking her quite easy. I think she’s a good horse. I jumped her in the six-bar because I thought it would be a good bit of training for her going down through the fences, you could say in a grid. She jumped her first National Grand Prix a month ago.

“She hasn’t done that much for a nine-year-old. She is still quite green, but I like her a lot and think she could be one for the bigger classes, hopefully.

“Mullingar is probably one of the best shows in the country and having two weeks of two-star jumping is great. I’m bringing three horses for week two, so fingers crossed.”