GALWAY’s Grace Maxwell Murphy and her husband William McMahon enjoyed a superb 2022 showing season with their home-bred middleweight Gleann Rua Da Vinci who rounded off his career on Irish soil by winning the TopSpec supreme hunter championship in the Main Arena at the Dublin Horse Show.

The 2015 Camillo VDL gelding is now in England as is Bloomfield Distinction, the heavyweight champion who stood reserve, and the champion four-year-old of 12 months ago, Greenhall Robin Hood. The 2022 champion lightweight Lady Bell, who was also crowned champion mare, is not being shown by his owner/rider Niamh Martin who is happy for the bay to rest on her laurels.

Some, but certainly not all, of the country’s top hunters took one another on in the Connolly’s Red Mills/Showing Ireland champion of champions final last month at Barnadown where Rosemary Connors claimed the ridden hunter title on Deirdre Kane’s Mighty Power.

The home-bred Watermill Swatch gelding is due to start in the lightweight four-year-old geldings’ class in Ring 2 on Thursday.

Co Kilkenny’s Brian Murphy qualified two ridden hunters for Barnadown and still retains the ride on Mr Ramsey, the 2015 Pollux de Muse gelding on whom he finished reserve heavyweight champion last August for Terry and Sally Johnston.

Jane Bradbury didn’t contest any of the Red Mills qualifiers but, while keeping her power dry as much as possible, she landed the ridden hunter championship at the Tattersalls July Show on Bernard Furlong’s Bloomfield Watergate. That Watermill Swatch gelding won the All-Ireland three-year-old championship at Bannow and Rathangan last season after which he went on to claim the youngstock championship here for his breeder, Daphne Tierney.

The 2013 Kings Master mare Queens Master won the large riding horse class here in 2017 under owner Anne Byrne’s daughter Katie; last year the Co Meath combination won the traditionally-bred working hunter class and went on to stand reserve champion. At Barnadown last month they won the champion of champions’ amateur ridden hunter title and next week they contest the older lightweight mares’ class.

Referencing amateurs, sisters Suzanne and Lyndsey O’Brien will compete in the sportsman hunter classes on Munthers Ranger (lightweight) and Creevaghstables Mr Bloomfield (middle/heavyweight) respectively. However, they will have to contend with last year’s champion, the Orla Maguire-owned and ridden MBF Quick Decision, an eight-year-old OBOS Quality 004 gelding.

As for Maxwell-Murphy and McMahon they have a smart four-year-old heavyweight, Gleann Rua Marksman, who won his class at Balmoral, and a four-year-old small hunter named Gleann Rua Monarch, a Moylough Legacy half-brother to Gleann Rua da Vinci.

In the smalls, their rivals could well include the Balmoral champion and reserve, Ryan Anderson’s four-year-old Highview Overado (by Cavalier Land) and Susan Fanning’s year-older Imperial Tiger gelding Balief Imperial; the Brian Murphy-produced Gortfree Lakeside Lad four-year-old Flurry Knox the much beribboned and versatile Darcy Chanteloube.