ROBERT Harrison completed a successful opening week of the Millstreet International Welcome Tour by taking the honours in the closing CSI* classes. Under blue skies, the Longford rider rode David Harrison’s Knockbaun Douggie to victory in the Table C class before going on to win the 1.35m Table A class with his father David’s Holly Castleforbes.

Having completed the majority of his first round with just one stirrup, Seamus Hayes had to settle for second place in the jump-off with Brian McClintock’s Baricello W, rounding off a busy week for the Tipperary rider who had 19 horses stabled on-site.

In the first week of competition, over 2,500 entries were recorded in competitions ranging from newcomer ponies to 1.35m CSI* and almost everything in between.

New additions to the Welcome Tour schedule were warmly welcomed, with over 100 competitors lining out for the Eventing Ireland combined training classes on Saturday; many using the class as a warm-up for Monday’s one-day event in Drishane Castle.

The early days of the Welcome Tour provided the rare opportunity to host lower level and young horse classes in the main international arena before the arrival of visiting course designer Mark McGowan (GBR), who teamed up with James Tarrant once again to provide a series of challenging but fair tracks across the weekend.

In the opening 1.25m CSI* class, regular Millstreet raider Sven Hadley’s mares proved hard to match, with Cassana and Carla taking the first two places for the Galway-based rider who is gearing up for another successful week in Milstreet before moving on to Louth County Show in a few weeks time.

Just one second on the clock separated the top two in the following 1.35m Jump Off class with Deane Rogan taking the ribbons aboard Falco Van Spieveld, while Maura Counihan had to settle for second position with Killerisk Minnie.

With qualifying places on offer for the prestigious young horse classes during Millstreet International Horse Show, the age classes were a hotly contested affair. Thomas O’Brien secured the first place in the Millstreet Ruby Final with Sinead Conneely’s Miss Darco while Sven Hadley continued his winning ways by taking a position in the Boomerang 6/7 Year Old Final with Castlefield Cassie.

The Eventing Ireland one-day-event brought the first part of the 2015 Welcome Tour to a close and afforded many of the visiting show-jumpers the opportunity to watch their eventing counterparts take on the spectacular Drishane Castle cross country course. Turn to page A55 for Sally Parkyn’s eventing report.