Caitriona Murphy

AN IMPRESSIVE €40,000 prize fund has been unveiled for the inaugural Eventing Ireland National Championships at Ballindenisk in July.

Eventing Ireland and Horse Sport Ireland are each contributing to the pot, which is understood to be the biggest prize fund for a national event anywhere in Europe. The bursaries will have a special focus on rewarding top competing mares. The prize fund is open to both riders and breeders, with no hike in entry fees. The CNC*** winner can look forward to prize money of €1,000.

Horse Sport Ireland is providing its €20,000 in funding to Eventing Ireland through bursaries from its Innovation Fund, which was announced earlier this year. Some 11 projects, including the Eventing Ireland National Championships, are to benefit from funding of almost €98,000.

The HSI bursaries at the eventing championships on Saturday and Sunday, July 11th-12th will be split into six categories, aimed at the best placed horses from four-year-olds upwards and their breeders.

Bursaries will be awarded to the breeders of the highest-placed four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old pedigree-recorded horses born in Ireland and registered with an EU licensed studbook. These awards will be made in the EI 90, EI 100 and CNC* classes.

There will also be bursaries for breeders of the highest-placed pedigree recorded horse registered with an EU licensed studbook for the highest placed CNC*, CNC** and CNC*** horses at the championship.

In keeping with the Reaching New Heights strategy of highlighting performance genetics in the sport horse industry, high performing mares will also be rewarded with bursaries at Ballindenisk.

Six mare-only awards will be made for the highest-placed mares in the four-year-old, five-year-old, six-year-old, CNC*, CNC** and CNC*** categories. The same rules on pedigree recording and studbook registration will apply.

A spokesperson for Eventing Ireland said the breeder bursaries are expected to be worth over €2,000 for each category, while the mare bursaries are set to be around €1,000, although this has yet to be confirmed.

Horse Sport Ireland’s breeding director Alison Corbally, said: “The new emphasis on bursaries for studbook registered mares will provide owners with a great incentive to compete their mares and will give us the opportunity to identify the top potential performance mares in the country.”

She added: “We hope these championships generate a lot of interest within the industry and add value to the participating mares.”

Eventing Ireland chairman, Georgia Stubington said she was delighted with the support the organisation’s new National Championships had received from Horse Sport Ireland.

“I believe that this is a wonderful opportunity for our members and I look forward to shaking the hands of our new National Champions!” she added.

Ballindenisk host Peter Fell said preparation for the championships was well underway, with stabling for 150 horses to be on site and all competitors riding in the show jumping and dressage arenas to be in one central location.

“This is really going to be a members’ championship where everyone gets the feel of an international event but without the high costs. We want to make it accessible for everyone to get that ‘big event feel’ here,” he said.

To that end, stabling costs for the first 150 stables have been discounted to €50 per stable, with camping and lorry hook-up facilities on site and plenty of entertainment planned.

Entries can be made online now via the Eventing Ireland website and will close on July 1st.