THE three-time Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning trainer Henrietta Knight has stated that Irish training methods are better than the British so it therefore will be interesting to learn how she views retraining methods in this country following her stint as judge for next Saturday’s Irish Thoroughbred Marketing Racehorse to Riding Horse Championship at the Dublin Horse Show.

Conformation

Henrietta will be assessing conformation in Ring 1 where she will be joined by Nina Carberry as ride judge.

Seventeen horses have been entered including the 10-year-old Mr Dinos gelding McQuinn. The bay is due to be ridden by his former trainer, Suzy Barkley, who is very much involved in the rehoming of former racehorses.

McQuinn, who last ran in March this year, never won but was placed on four occasions, most promisingly when third of 18 on his track debut in a Punchestown bumper just over three years ago.

Patricia Duffin’s homebred Fine Rightly, who will be ridden by Shannon Baird, was trained by Stuart Crawford to win two bumpers, two hurdle races and five chases. Casey Webb, who events Duffin’s six-year-old Winged Love gelding Hiya Sonny, would love to have the ride on Fine Rightly at Dublin referring to the bay as being “very well balanced and a beautiful horse”.

Other entries of interest to northern visitors to the show are Oisin McCann’s 13-year-old Byron gelding Poetic Lord, Seainin Mahon’s similarly aged Gold Well gelding General Principle (one of the pre-class favourites) and Allison Matthews’s 16-year-old Brian Boru gelding Tadhg.

See page 33 in the Dublin Horse Show magazine which came free with today’s paper for more on this popular championship.

Equine dentist

If you’re heading down to the show as it opens on Wednesday don’t forget to support our favourite former amateur/former National Hunt jockey turned equine dentist Jason McKeown.

He will be competing there in the second of the APCOA performance Irish Draught championships with his seven-year-old Scrapman gelding, Rockvale Moon River.