BIG crowds thronged Millstreet again this week for their International Horse Show CSI2* fixture, the highlight of which is Sunday afternoon’s €25,000 Noel C. Duggan Engineeering Grand Prix.
Once again the Duggan family have pulled out all the stops to put on a great week of show jumping, coupled with entertainment, with a total prize fund of some €130,000 on offer, mainly sponsored by themselves and Connolly’s Red Mills.
Spinning an estimated €5m into the Munster economy, visitors are staying in Millstreet, Mallow and Killarney for the event.
Held from August 2nd to 6th this year, in a change from the Green Glens’ usual post-RDS dates due to the looming European Championships, action got underway on Wednesday with a host of qualifiers for this weekend’s finals, including the ever popular Millstreet Ruby 5yo qualifier and the Boomerang (6yo/7yo) qualifiers as well as the Young Champion of Ireland and Pony Discovery and National qualifiers.
Once again the event is being beamed around the world by clipmyhorse.tvdeutschland, Millstreet’s online broadcast partners, so the show has a huge international audience tuning in. Last year, viewers tuned in from 26 countries with 90,000 unique views and another 15,000 logged into the archives to check out horses and ponies.
Show visitors can also access the live-scoring equipe.app in operation across all eight arenas, from the ponies up to the international horse classes.
Nicholas Connors got his week off to a great start, winning the opening CSI class with Just Jump, while Mikey Pender recorded his first win of the week at Millstreet on Thursday with Marion Hughes’ Miss Belgium III in the first Millstreet Ruby Qualifier. There was early success too for Cian Harrison who claimed the Boomerang Qualifier with the seven-year-old Mr Big Cash.
This week’s Show has been a quick turnaround for the Duggan family and their hardworking team after the recent hugely successful FEI European Eventing Championships for Young Riders and Juniors, but there is more to come yet at Green Glens with the Millstret International Horse Trials at the end of August and the season will close in the autumn with the Owners Pony Charity Show (October 27th-29th).
Welcoming everyone to Millstreet International Horse Show this weekend, Thomas Duggan said: “Due to the way the Europeans fell this year, we had no option but to bring our CSI2* Show forward and were apprehensive but I’m delighted to say we have nearly 1,000 horses and ponies stabled here, which is huge, and entries are close on 6,000, which is massive, so all is running very well.
“Earlier this week we had no less than 54 riders in the new Under 10s competition. The final is in the Main Arena on Saturday (today). It’s just great to see it and we are very happy overall.”
Commenting on the challenge of hosting the two-star show so quickly after the European Eventing Championships, Thomas said: “It was very challenging to get everything changed back so quickly but we got there.
“We have a very good team of lads and girls in place, there was a plan in place and we said we would be ready and we are ready. Now we have a little bit more time to turn it all back again after our International Horse Show for our upcoming International Eventing trials.”
Increased crowd numbers came through the gates at Green Glens yesterday and bumper crowds are expected for the weekend highlight classes.
“We are hosting a Gold, Silver and Bronze Tours this week and it was great to see so many youngsters jumping and getting their first taste of international classes. We resurfaced the Main Outdoor Arena as well as the main warm-up ring and there’s been a lot of favourable comments about that from everyone.
“Admission, of course, is free in and a visit to Millstreet is a great day out for families. We have a full range of food and tradestands on offer with live music at night and we are also looking forward to our third year of the Millstreet Foal Sale, organised by Marcus O’Donnell.
“He has put together a good bunch of foals that will hopefully go well.”