Show Jumping has always been the Achilles' heel of so many three-day event riders and, once again, this final phase proved the Waterloo of overnight leaders in two of the three sections at the Balcas-backed fixture at Necarne Castle in Co Fermanagh yesterday.
Only Jane Tiffin, who moved over to Ireland from London 14 years ago, managed to maintain her advantage to claim her first three-day event win with her own Class Touch in the national onestar.
Knocked poles proved expensive for those behind the Ballymore Eustace based 33-year-old, with Susan Shortt's clear from Rosemary Lowry's Hannigan boosting her right up from overnight sixth to yet another second place for the Kilcullen jockey - her eighth in a succession of near misses that only her mother Elizabeth managed to break when winning the charity donkey derby and the table quiz on Saturday night.
But hopes of home victories in the international and junior sections were never destined to be fulfilled. Claire Phillips from Wrexham brought her home-bred Capuchin up from overnight fifth to claim the two-star honours when all four of those above her faulted in the final phase, while last year's one-star winner Steven Smith jumped up from eighth with Parker II to finish second ahead of the 1995 two-star winner Nicola Cassidy, this time riding Conor Crowley's Mr Mullins.
Five riders were taken to hospital after falls during Saturday's cross-country, but all are reported to be on the mend. Morale in the Boyce household in Dunsany took a distinct fall, however, when 17year-old Cliona's brilliant round with Coalman was all forgotten in a clatter of fallen poles yesterday to allow British youngster Cressie Clague-Reading to reinstate the palamino cob Shooting Star back at the head of affairs in the Mahon's Hotel junior class, with Clongowes student William Clarke best of the Irish in second with Gemstone.
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