BRITAIN’s Jane Holderness-Roddam and Jane Tolley are due to start judging the Berney Bros Saddlery ridden Connemara classes at 10.25am next Thursday in Ring 2 where the vast majority of the ponies who appear before them will have qualified to do so.

The odd ones out are the stallions who can be entered directly into a class where they have the stage to themselves.

Of the known stallion entries, Noreen O’Connor’s five-year-old Barr A Leam Shadow (by I Love You Melody) and Sophie Countess von Maltzan’s eight-year-old Bettyspark Shadow (by Silver Shadow) qualified for the Connemara performance hunter section on Wednesday.

Last year’s winner of the class, Ailsa Vines’s Moyabbey George, is an absentee but the second that day and winner in 2023, Patrick Curran’s Glencarrig Douvan, a seven-year-old son of Glencarrig Knight, will start on the back of some wonderful success this season under Grace Maxwell Murphy.

Unfortunately, due to rider injury, the 2024 champion, Loughderg Star, won’t be appearing next week but the reserve champion, Teach Mór Sparrow, qualified again at Tullylish under owner Aoife O’Connor’s daughter Sadhbh for the four and five-year-old class. This dun Blakehill Sparrow gelding is out of a Commanding Hero mare.

Sure to catch the eye of the judges in the young riders’ class, if only for his amazing tail, is the Balmoral champion for the second year running, Caherpuca Chappy, who has also been winning on the British circuit.

Ridden for her father Daryl by Amira Curran, this seven-year-old gelding is by Coolin America out of a Rebel Justice mare.

There appears to be fewer and fewer male riders on the showing circuit these days and one who just might be making his final appearance at Dublin is apprentice jockey Conor Cusack.

The 17-year-old would bring up a rare mixed double within a few weeks if he was to add victory here on his mother Cheryl’s Carramore Boy, a six-year-old Rathcoona Cove gelding, to those he has recorded on the track - also on the flat.

As ponies had to qualify for three of the four classes, and two of those are for six-year-olds and over, a great many of the names would be familiar to most who are heading to Dublin.