Wexford's Harry Allen has followed in the footsteps of his brother Bertram by winning individual gold in the show jumping section of the FEI European pony championships in Kaposvár, Hungary.
A member of Ireland’s gold medal-winning team, 16-year-old Allen completed five rounds of jumping with just one time fault on board Ballywalter Farms’ year young Belgian Warmblood mare Cassandra van het Roelhof. Athlone’s Kate Derwin claimed silver on four faults with Clive Swindell’s Connemara mare Cul Ban Mistress, a nine-year-old by Silver Shadow, and rounded the 15-year-old rounded off her appearance at the championships by singing Amhrán na bhFiann at Sunday’s prize-giving ceremony.
On Saturday, the Irish team of Zara Nelson (Millridge Buachaill Bui), Hannah Adams (Myshall Rodge), Isabelle Comerford (Colour Me Fancy) and Jennifer Kuehnle (Fernhill Timbacktoo) took bronze in the eventing championships on a penalty score of 170.20 behind France (141.60) and Great Britain (152.40).
In show jumping, Bertram Allen’s Valkenswaard team won the Berlin leg of the Global Champions League when he, on board Izzy By Picobello, and Italy’s Alberto Zorzi on Cornetto K, won Saturday’s second stage of the competition. With four rounds of the League remaining, Valkenswaard are in second place on 213 points behind Hamburg Diamonds (221) who were runners-up in Berlin.
Riding Graham Dalton’s EFS Top Contender, Michael Duffy finished third (34.34) in Saturday’s Queen Elizabeth II Cup at Hickstead, England. The 1.50m jump-off competition saw a pair of British riders fill the top two places, Harriet Nuttall winning on Galway Bay Jed (32.64) ahead of Holly Smith on her own Irish Sport Horse gelding Quality Old Joker, a nine-year-old by OBOS Quality 004.
In Sunday’s 1.60m jump-off competition at the Sussex venue, the Longines King George V Gold Cup, Shane Sweetnam and Main Road finished best of the Irish in fifth behind Brazil’s Yuri Mansur riding Babylotte.
British riders won four of the seven competitions at the weekend’s Camphire international horse trials in Co Waterford with Oxfordshire-based Izzy Taylor filling the top three places in the Gain Equine Nutrition & Alltech CIC3* class. She completed on her winning dressage score of 34 penalties with Trevidden and finished second with Be Touchable (37.5) and third on Perfect Stranger (41.9).
Finishing on his flat work mark of 48, Tom McEwen won the same sponsors' CCI3* class on the ISH gelding Strike Smartly, a 10-year-old grey by Ghareeb. Co Carlow's Sam Watson had a frustrating weekend, placing second here with Ardagh Highlight (50.3) and also filling the runner-up slot on Imperial Sky in the Castleacre Insurance Brokers CCI2* won by Co Kildare's Camilla Speirs on BT Cloud Nine.
England-based Australian Kevin McNab filled the top two spots in the Horse Sport Ireland CIC2* class with two ISH geldings, winning with the Inocent eight-year-old Brookfield Inocent (33.6) and placing second on Brookfield Quality (38.6), an OBOS Quality 004 eight-year-old.
While most Irish event riders were competing at Camphire, Co Down Olympian Clare Abbott travelled to the Burgam horse trials in the north-east of England. There she warmed up for the four-star Burghley horse trials at the end of the month by finishing eighth (49.7) in the CIC3* class with the McKay family’s home-bred ISH gelding Euro Prince.
There will be international show jumping this week, from Tuesday through to Sunday, at the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet, Co Cork.
