SPORTSMAN by name but also by nature was required by the connections in Saturday’s late-running amateur classes. With Ring 1 running late by two hours throughout the day, it was just before 9.30pm when Suzanne and Laura O’Brien’s Munther’s Ranger was crowned the overall Sportsman champion.

The Sportsman classes for amateur riders have two sections for lightweight and middle/heavyweight horses and are another important shop window for the Irish leisure horse market.

The first section to be completed was the middle/heavyweight class, fortunately diverted to a vacant Ring 2 while the lightweight class waited for the leadrein classes in Ring 1 to be judged.

Niamh O’Carroll’s long trip from West Cork paid off when her Leaca Re Valentino won this class. Bred on Irish Draught lines, the 13-year-old was originally bought by Niamh’s mother but was ‘hijacked’ by Niamh and is by Rockrimmon Robusticus out of the Carrabawn View dam, Lake View Katie.

Also waiting for the overall championship was Chloe Thompson on board Alastair McDonald’s Battle’s Gent, a six-year-old by the Westfalian sire Sunset Boulevard.

The sun had indeed set and the floodlights were deployed for the overall championship, won by the lightweight class winner Munther’s Ranger, owned by the mother and daughter team of Laura and Suzanne O’Brien, from Adare. A five-year-old by the thoroughbred sire Munther, he is from breeder Kieran O’Gorman’s successful Brookfield line of Breeders’ Championship prize winners.

The reserve title also went the way of the lightweight class result and this was Mary Byrne Fleming’s second-placed Bishopshall Sparky. Another Irish Draught ambassador, being by Huntingfield Sunny C and out of the Clover Hill mare Sparky Clover, he was ridden by Clara Fleming-Duggan.