TAILORED Equestrian came on board in support of this year’s Irish Pony Society Kildare North Leinster Area summer show in Tatteralls Ireland by sponsoring the working hunter ring.

The Alan Lynch-designed course, which was termed challenging, included the Bob Marley Bridge (a replica of the RDS bridge), banks, Derby rails and finishing with a treble of rails/gates. The classes were judged by Mary Moore and Britain’s Kevan Baskeysfield who, taking photographs, stated: “I will never see a working hunter course like this again in my lifetime.”

The pair’s novice champion was local rider Polly Geraghty on her mother Georgette’s British import Stars At Night, an 18-year-old blue and white gelding on whom his young rider, who recently turned 10, just missed out on qualifying for the working hunter starter stakes at Dublin this morning (Saturday). Representing the Meath Branch, Polly and Stars At Night finished fourth in the Under 10s’ combined training final at the recent Irish Pony Club Festival in Barnadown.

O’Donnell double

On a superb day for Co Tipperary’s Ellie O’Donnell, she not only landed the open working hunter championship on Ballyhone Toby but, later in the day, she partnered her mother Trish’s 15-year-old bay gelding to win the Anna Byrne perpetual working hunter challenge trophy and, with it, a €500 training bursary awarded by the Byrne family.

Eleven-year-old Ellie, who qualified Ballyhone Toby at Banner for today’s 143cm working hunter class at Dublin, is the second winner of this trophy following Chloe Doyle who, amazingly, is in the same class at the Presentation Secondary School in Thurles. Ellie’s blazing gallop around the entire working hunter ring on Sunday sealed the deal.