AFTER 10 days of competition, some of which we covered in last week’s issue, the JCB UK Pony Club championships concluded last Saturday at Offchurch Bury in Warwickshire, which is also set to be the venue for 2026 and 2027.

There were roughly 3,500 entries spread between the disciplines of mounted games, polocrosse, Tetrathlon, Triathlon, dressage, show jumping and eventing, plus horse and pony care, with over 600 temporary stables erected on site.

We start this week with dressage as both Area 17 and the Irish Pony Club were involved in this discipline. Winners at the IPC Festival in Barnadown, the Kildare Branch foursome of siblings Lucy and Jamie Maughan (riding Valley View Sammy and Fly Over Girl respectively), their cousin Kate Moore (The Blue Diamond) and good friend Laura Butler (Lenovo) contested the Intermediate team championship where, on a converted score of 27, they finished seventh of the 39 teams.

In the individual arenas, the best performances came from Lucy Maughan, who was sixth in Arena E, and from East Antrim’s Erin McCrea (Eisfee) and Moore, who were seventh and joint-eighth in Arena G. Lucy Maughan started the championships by finishing second in a warm-up class on Valley View Sammy, her father Fergus’s 2007 bay gelding.

McCrea also competed at Open level where she and her father Clinton’s Eisfee finished eighth in their Arena. Prior to heading over to Offchurch Bury, McCrea and Eisfee, an 18-year-old Hanoverian mare by Embassy 1, finished third in the members’ combined training championship at the Dublin Horse Show.

In the Freestyle championships, the Killultagh, Old Rock and Chichester’s Amelia Wheeler finished eighth at Intermediate level on Midnight Minty, while East Antrim’s Annie Morrow was 10th at Novice level on Liberty’s Benjamin.

Last week, I failed to mention the polocrosse championships where the East Downs’ Annabelle Gill was on the winning Junior Novice team, while Abbey Wallace of North Down was a member of the third-placed team at Junior Open level.