Early Edition, a show hunter from Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, is the first “Search for a Star” supreme champion of the new century, and after taking the title at the Horse of the Year Show the latest name to be added to the growing list of champions discovered over the last five years.
“Search for a Star,” introduced and still sponsored by South Essex Insurance Brokers, boasts discoveries such as Shelford Rupert, who went on to win a championship at the National Light Horse Breeding Society show, the cob, Harley, subsequently a winner at the Horse of the Year Show and the 1998 winner, first-ridden pony Barkway Black Magic. Last year’s winner, Class Performance, has had a great show season while one of the 1998 finalists, King Street, was this year’s Horse of the Year Show hunter champion.
Reserve Champion was the working hunter, Matangi Rose, owned and ridden by Joanne Sandland from Uttoxeter, who has owned the 10-year-old for the last seven years after buying her at three.
Both horses were champions in their individual categories before going on to the supreme judging by Robert Oliver and Anne Pritchard.
Other individual champions were the ponies Temmas Littler Lancer, owned by Corrina Jenkinson from Southampton and ridden by her nine-year-old daughter, and Wensum Parsley, ridden for her mother by Lauren Jones, 17, from Braughing, Hertfordshire; the hack, Brown Sugar II, ridden by Louise Maxwell, 16, from Kirkudbright, Scotland; Sarah Jane Hornsby’s cob, Jason Jones, from Pulborough, West Sussex; the Riding Club Show Horse, The House Mouse, ridden and owned by Anne Gayfer from Stowmarket.
