THE popularity of the working hunter classes at the Tattersalls July Show meant that British judges Margaret Hopkins (ride) and Louise Gaunt (conformation) had a very long session on Saturday when their first class in the TopSpec arena started at 9am and it was around 8pm when they crowned their champion, the Lillymai Walsh-ridden Chapel Hill Rose.

This was very much a bittersweet moment for connections of the five-year-old Irish Draught mare as her registered owner, Desi Kent, died suddenly six weeks ago. He had purchased the daughter of Bannvalley Silver Dancer as a two-year-old from the late Sadie Murphy who bred Sunday’s champion out of her Gurraun Zidane mare Lilly B.

“This is a really lovely mare with a wonderful temperament who can turn her hand to anything,” said the rider’s mother, and the breeder’s daughter, Marie Kent. “Lillymai did an unaffiliated event at Frankfort Stud on her and she has done some registered jumping on the mare incuding an RDS 1.10/1.15m young riders’ qualifier at Barnadown.

“As Lillymai is only 15, she couldn’t do the Irish Draught performance qualifiers but she wanted to bring the mare to Dublin so has her entered in the large riding horse class. She did do the pony working hunter qualifiers and qualified for the 153cm class with Chapel Hill Dark Spark who she also qualified for the 153cm junior equitation.”

Ciara Power, who has coached the rider from a young age, is listed as her trainer in the Dublin catalogue but she also has show jumping lessons with Paddy O’Donnell while Shane McKenna is fine-tuning her for showing.

In addition to competing with SJI, Lillymai is an active member of Waterford Pony Club, hunts with the Mullinavat Harriers during the winter - as does her mother - competes with Eventing Ireland (she won the Grassroots EI90 (P) championship last year on Chapel Hill Dark Spark) and still has time to play camogie for her local Kilmacow GAA club.

Hurling is the passion of her brother David (12) who doesn’t ride but will act as second groom to his mother Marie while dad Enda is the driver.

En route to winning the championship for the George Mernagh memorial cup, Lillymai Walsh and Chapel Hill Rose moved up a place to top the final line-up in the open 1.05m class while Good News Scotty, who recorded the only clear round, moved up from third to win the concluding open class which was a qualifier for next year’s Royal International Horse Show at Hickstead.

“This is our third time to win a qualifier and, while other matters intervened to stop us travelling before, this time I’m determined to go and am going to put a bit of money away each month to cover the costs,” said winning rider Shauna Kidd, a mother of three who works as a validation and compliance specialist with the Dunboyne-based bio pharmaceutical firm MSD. “We haven’t done a lot this year but we did win the small horse working hunter class at Balmoral and some local Riding Club classes.”

Kidd ended up on her own at Tattersalls on Sunday as her mother Jayne, a fellow member of Ashbrook Riding Club who is sometimes allowed compete Good News Scotty, took Shauna’s children home; another Ashbrook member, John Gavin, bred the 16-year-old Last News gelding. As her grey was overlooked in the championship, Kidd probably rued the fact that she hadn’t gone home as well especially as she was competing in the EI100 (Amateur) class at Clonmahon House on Sunday with Killossery Khaleesi.

In selecting their reserve champion, Hopkins and Gaunt stuck with the RIHS qualifier and selected the second-placed combination in that class, Lesley Jones with Yvonne Pearson’s 11-year-old Loughehoe Guy gelding Cairnview Redwood Guy.