Robert Cockram scored a double success, lifting both champion and reserve honours in the Breeders’ Challenge supreme in-hand qualifier at Kent County last weekend.
Two HOYS tickets were available at Kent County due to FMD. The championship went to Jean Clark’s Radway Small Talk with her first foal, a filly by Sandbourne Royal Ensign, at foot. Previously a prolific winner under saddle, Small Talk was retired to stud following her HOYS intermediate win.
Reserve was the in-hand hack champion, Judith Powell’s three-year-old Pendley Bright Otter. This mare, who will come out under saddle next year, is bred “in the purple”, by Ottergayle out of Pendley Limelight, who is the daughter of Jennifer Williams’s former champion hack Highlight.
The small hunter winner Osborne Refrigerators’ Comberton Carlos, ridden by Alison Tucker, was also by Ottergayle. This class also gave two HOYS tickets, so Allister Hood added to his tally with Mr andMrs Underwood¨s After All.
Allister had stood champion in the riding horse class the previous day with the small winner Smallfry. He had also taken a hack ticket when he finished third in a very strong class on Derwent Mayerling, another by Ottergayle.
The class was won by the eventual hack champions, Vicky Keen and Marquis Of Queensbury, with Helen Baker and Brian and Jane Williams’s Saran Wild Rose taking the reserve.
The middleweights took champion and reserve in the hunter division, Sue Rawding making it four wins in a row and three championships at Kent with Reaction. Guy Landau stood reserve with his own Man Of Honour.
Ann Baker headed the lightweights with Mr Flashman, while the heavyweight title went to Pippa Moon and Dooleys Greenhill.
Lady Caroline Tyrell won a quality amateur cob class on The Friar and was then placed second in the lightweight HOYS qualifier behind Richard Ramsay on Carol Bardo’s Dandini III.
See this week’s issue (19 July) of Horse &Hound magazine for the full Kent County report.