NOT for the first time, the Irish Sport Horse stallion Puissance heads Eventing Ireland’s top 10 list of sires and, once more, his position is mainly due to the performance of a horse ridden by Sam Watson.

Aged 31, Puissance is retired from stud duty at Michael and Eva Hutchinson’s Ballyquirke Stud where they still have some frozen semen available for breeders.

The Co Kilkenny establishment now stands Puissance’s son Imperial Tiger and the triple Group 2 winner Sea Moon who covers thoroughbred mares only.

Sadly, the stud lost their Heartbreaker stallion Winston to colic in recent months.

Imperial Tiger is a full-brother to many top eventers including Horseware Ardagh Highlight who Watson partnered to win team silver at the World Equestrian Games in Tryon, North Carolina in September last year and on whom the Co Carlow rider finished sixth in the CCI4* at Luhmühlen two months previously.

The points earned through those results pushed Puissance to the top of the 2018 sires’ list and this season he owes that position to EEW Ltd and Hannah ‘Sparkles’ Watson’s Imperial Sky.

That 13-year-old grey gelding, who finished a close second to Rioghan Rua on the leading horse list with 220 points, was bred in Co Kilkenny by Carolyn Lanigan-O’Keeffe who was runner-up to Mags Kinsella in the breeders’ table.

Thanks to Imperial Sky and his full-brother, the Louise Bloomer-ridden Hollybrook High In The Sky, their dam Skies Of Blue, finished first in the top 10 mares’ chart.

Watson and Imperial Sky had their first international start of the season in April at Ballindenisk, where they won the CCI4*-L (110 points), and concluded their campaign in CCI4*-S classes at Camphire, where they saw off 64 rivals to win (32 points), and then at Millstreet where, in the 30-runner Event Rider Masters class, they were beaten into second by 0.3 of a penalty.