IT was perhaps an inauspicious start to a glittering showing career: “I was in the first ridden class and we finished last!” Alicia Devlin Byrne said about her Irish Pony Society debut at Lambertstown with Fara, a four-legged present for her fifth birthday.

Since that character-building result, the Wicklow schoolteacher now combines the classroom with the showring, criss-crossing the country’s show circuit during summer holidays and hunting at weekends during school term.