THE 2018 mare Chantilly On The Rocks, who won the Tiernan Gill Brooklands Bedding riding horse championship at Dublin last year, will again be appearing in Ring 1 when the Dublin Horse Show opens on Wednesday but later in the day in the four and five-year-old small hunter class.

Ciara Mullen, who partnered the eye-catching Guinness bay to claim the title last August, won’t have a mount in the riding horse division next week but her partner, former jockey Lee Cosgrove, rides the Malahide yard’s four-year-old Yakooum filly Rockroyal Kate Dream, a winner at Mullingar earlier this summer.

Nicola Perrin, who finished reserve a year ago on Ballarin Baroness, must be favourite to win the championship next week with her home-bred Ballarin Rose Bud who most recently was crowned the Connolly’s Red Mills ridden horse champion of champions at Barnadown. A five-year-old daughter of Ballysax Hero out of a Nash Me mare, Ballarin Rose Bud, who wasn’t shown at four, also won at the Flavours of Fingal County show, Raheendaw and Balmoral where Chantilly On The Rocks stood reserve.

As a source of future top-class winners, the riding horse section at Dublin was well promoted at the recent Royal International Horse Show in Hickstead where the 2016 RDS champion, Merrycorner Mister Bui, was crowned the supreme show hunter pony champion for the third year in a row.