WINNERS:AN EXHIBITOR from Lurgan heads into today's Aiken Promotions young stock championship in a strong position having won the two- and three-year-old titles in ring one yesterday.
Hugh McCusker’s chestnut Big Bucks, a winner here as a yearling, beat the Balmoral champion Ballycronnery Cron in the lightweight geldings class before holding off Dermot Gordon’s Kings Master filly to land the two-year-old crown.
In the three-year-old division, the Lurgan yard was represented by Good Guy, which the owner bought last year. Mr McCusker himself pulled up lame after showing the three-year-old but, should he be fit, it will be interesting to see which horse he chooses to lead up this afternoon.
Lightweight hunters occupied ring two for most of yesterday. PJ Hegarty’s home-bred Fenyas Elegance started her defence of the Bewleys Hotels mares crown when winning the older mares class under Ann O’Grady.
In the five-year-old geldings section, Trevor and Lorraine Wallace’s Shannon Beau was moved up a place to take the red. However, the crowd reserved its applause for Rosemary Connors’s demoted Woodfield Indo, who was sporting two rows of stitches in his shoulder following an overnight incident in his stable.
The jumping phase in the young event horse classes proved decisive with first place in the Interactive Project Managers four-year- old section going to the thoroughbred mare On Bennefit.
Owned by Charlestown Stud and ridden by Ciarán Murphy, she put in one of just four clear rounds.
In the RKD Architects five-year- old class, in spite of a fence down there was no catching the overnight leader, the Sarah Ennis-ridden Stellor Rebound.