Mullingar Show to host new sale

Mullingar International Show has announced a new auction sale will be added to its June bank holiday two-star show. The auction will be held after the three-year-old loose jumping class and in a change to a previously announced date, the selection day has been put back to Thursday 19 May, to find 30 top three-year-olds to compete in the class, which will be hosted on 4 June at Mullingar.

McDonald tight-lipped

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Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) chief executive Damian McDonald has declined to comment on ongoing speculation that he could be in the frame for the position of general secretary of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA). McDonald is a former chief executive of Macra na Feirme, of which newly-elected IFA president and Galway farmer Joe Healy was a former president. McDonald left Macra in 2007 to take up his current role with HSI.

Badminton quartet

Competing at Badminton this weekend are Irish event riders Joseph Murphy, Camilla Speirs, Michael Ryan and Sarah Ennis, all mounted on Irish-bred horses. Germany’s Michael Jung is the hot favourite going into the top event, fresh from winning Rolex Kentucky last weekend.

Murphy will ride Sportsfield Othello and DHI Top Story, while Ryan teams up with his Olympic ride Ballylynch Adventure, who was ninth at the top British event last year. Speirs and Portersize Just A Jif will be hoping to better their 14th place in 210, while Co Meath’s Sarah Ennis rides BLM Diamond Delux, double-clear on his only outing at Belton International CIC*** recently.

Meanwhile, Irish Horse Gateway will be at Stand 246 promoting Irish-bred and produced event horses at the top four-star event.

Cloned foals on ground

Over a dozen foals are expected to be on the ground this spring sired by Hartwell Stud’s two clones of Cruising, Cruising Arish and Cruising Encore. Already foaled at Hartwell is a black colt by Cruising Encore out of a home-bred mare by Bonnie Prince and he was followed by a chesnut filly by Cruising Arish whose dam is a Puissance x Clover Hill mare owned by Sharon O’Brien in Co Kilkenny.

Also born in the past two weeks is Lanaken silver medal winner Ard Ginger Pop’s two embryo transfer foals, a bay colt by Diamant De Semilly, owned by Ashford Farm’s Enda Carroll, and the other is a bay filly by Cornet Obolensky, born to surrogate dams.

Nations Cup points race

Following the cancellation of Lummen Nations Cup, Ireland’s show jumpers will have to go all out to gain the highest points possible at the upcoming Nations Cup challenges in St Gallen, Falsterbo and Dublin. According to Irish chef d’équipe Robert Splaine, the points gained from these competitions will be added up after Dublin and divided by three, to give an average that will count in place of Lummen, where a strong Irish squad was expected to do well. Prior to last week’s cancellation, it was announced that Greg Broderick and MHS Going Global (ISH) would not compete in Belgian due to the horse suffering a setback.