MEMORIES OF an excellent and rain-free Royal Highland Show linger on a month after the event as we reach the mid point of the summer’s showing calendar.

By any standards, the show’s directors must be well pleased with their efforts and the management team relieved that their plans went ahead without too many problems, most of which passed by without notice to the general public and exhibitors. I’m sure you’ll join me in offering them our hearty congratulations.

Several things struck me about the show, not least of which was the success of some of our former showing jockeys who enjoyed extensive and successful careers in the show ring during their formative years. Needless to say, one such rider, Jemma Kirk, maintained her form in the major show jumping competitions with her horses Tosca and Wexford and continued to build upon her national reputation. However, there was another youngster who particularly caught my eye; this was young Mark Turnbull from the West Fife who is quietly blazing a trail with his parents’ home-bred horses over the jumps in adult classes. At 15 years of age, he was one of the youngest competitors in a highly competitive section of the show.

Having recently left school, Mark helps on his parents’ Ashes Farm near Culross as well as break and school for their very successful Ashton Stud, home to a small number of brood mares and their youngsters. The numbers are purposely kept low to enable the family to apply an individual touch to each of their offspring which they literally bring on from foaling to competition. His Royal Highland mount was one such horse, the bay Scottish Sports Horse registered, Ursula XII, a nine-year-old daughter of Ahorn and Paloma, a mare which was given to Mark’s mother, Mary, by her father, George Nimmo, one of Scotland’s most famous and charismatic show jumpers in former years. Just like his grandfather before him, whose Appaloosa mare, Galaxy, with her swishing tail used to thrill the ringside, Mark will be heading to compete in the newcomers at the Horse of the Year Show with Ursula which he qualified at Rowallan earlier in June. At Ingliston, he had a great show by any standards with creditable placings in three of the finals for which he qualified.

Mark’s father, John, enjoyed local competitions, the pony club and hunter trials but never aspired to the heights currently set by his son. Mary, too, admits to not quite reaching Horse of the Year Show standard but rode her horses at the young event horse finals at Burghley and show jumped locally. Both their children, Katie and Mark, were introduced to the show ring as part of their equestrian education and both were very successful on the flat and over jumps, but it was the latter and working hunter pony competitions which witnessed them rise to the top. Initially, Katie was the most competitive and successful rider, however now it is her brother who has taken over the reins and looks set for a competitive career in show jumping. The family have struck up a great friendship with the another well-known show jumping family, the Barrs from Lesmahagow, whose son Alex is mentoring Mark as well as providing him with inspiration with some good wins on his own horses; at the ‘Highland’ Alex was third in the star of the future competition with Major Ted.

The future looks bright for young Mark who is a quiet, sensible lad who admits that his experience in the show ring is helping him keep a cool head in the show jumping arena. Currently, he has several home-bred horses in competition including a mare newly introduced to the ring, Ashton Dolly-Pierre, a daughter of Ursula and the Nations Cup horse, Dollar Dealer Pierre. In every way a ‘home-grown’ product of Scotland, the combination of these youngsters, both human and equine, will be exciting to follow in the future.

The quality of show jumping at the Royal Highland was noticeably of a high standard thanks to the generosity of good sponsors, while among the showing classes, the Horse of the Year Show qualifying mountain and moorland ridden classes held on the last day had stepped up in class. Given that a considerable number of English professionals had made the trip north in search of qualifying tickets, it was gratifying that Scottish owners accounted for many of them on offer, including Brian and Shona Thomson with their Welsh cob stallion, Pennal The Great which stood champion at the show in 2009. Sandy Anderson from Peterhead (not to be confused with the Grandstand Media owner from Caithness) who, along with his sister Kathleen Scott, have been successfully breeding Welsh mountain ponies in the North-east for many years now, must have enjoyed seeing the stallion, Bryndefaid St Andrew, take his class for producer/rider Katie Marriott-Payne. With a host of wins to his credit this season in the south and a HOYS ticket already ‘in the bag’, the qualifying place remained in Scotland when Gartconnell Shooting Star stood in second place to qualify for his breeders John and Liz Russell.

Dartmoor breeders, Mr and Mrs Charlie Anderson from Carrutherstown, enjoyed qualifying success in recent years with their Welsh cobs, however this time it was their home-bred seven- year-old stallion, Rushfield Bailey, ridden by Louise Maxwell, which will take them to Birmingham. The last of the HOYS tickets remaining in Scotland from the open ridden classes went to local rider, Elspeth McDonald from Bathgate, with her well mannered dun Connemara mare, Pilgrims Fantasy. Disappointingly, after such a great effort in their classes to fight off some stiff opposition, none of the Scottish entries were able to claim championship honours which went over the border this time.

It was not the case however, in the mini native ridden classes qualifying for HOYS which took place the day before when Charlie Cousens claimed the tri-colour from a big entry with his Welsh mountain pony gelding, Brierdene Llewelyn, ridden by his daughter Olivia. The bay Welshman is no stranger to the Horse of the Year Show, in fact he took the first staging of a native lead rein championship there in 1999. Although his class second was reserve in the championship, it was another well-known winner round the Scottish shows that took the first ridden qualifying ticket; this was Christine Myles with her Aberdeenshire-bred Dartmoor gelding, Greenferns Shem, ridden by her daughter, Anna Wylie. Llewelyn went one stage better on the Saturday when he stood reserve for The Royal Bank of Scotland Trophy awarded this year to the ‘best animal in the light horse section’.

Unfortunately, this type of championship presents huge organisational difficulties for any show and I notice that a similar situation arose last week at the Great Yorkshire Show. The problem is simply the staging of an overall championship when all of the sections have not been concluded. In the case of the ‘Yorkshire’ there were several absentees including the show and show hunter pony champions, while at the Royal Highland it was Saturday’s working hunter pony champion and all of Sunday’s champions. So what kind of overall championship is this? Same with the Cuddy in-hand qualifier at the ‘Highland’; the coloured champion from Sunday’s strong classes literally misses the boat by a day. Of course, there is no easy answer to this problem of which the organisers are aware; by leaving these championships literally to the end of the show you risk losing many of your eligible champions which have long since gone home. Rotational daily supremes may go some way towards answering the problem, but the result hardly would describe an overall show supreme.

Lastly, two things struck me recently while on a visit to the Royal Norfolk Show, where I was judging for two days. Firstly, having finished my judging early on the second day, I grasped the opportunity to watch some of the weights classes in the hunter section which were most interesting to say the least. Sadly, I missed a Scottish win when Andrew and Mary Bowie’s Potter’s Ace won a strong novice class in the capable hands of professional producer Alistair Hood. It was the same producer’s middle weight hunter which really caught my eye. Owned and ridden by Alistair’s son, Oliver, Jenny’s Prince, is the old-fashioned type of weight carrying hunter we saw years ago with quality, great conformation and that easy sweeping action which really sets it apart from others. It is no wonder it has notched up championships at Windsor, South of England and recently the Great Yorkshire. By the Thoroughbred show jumping sire Porsche, he’s destined for the working hunter classes which substantiates the theory that no horse is too good to work.

The other thing that struck me was the fact that there had been as many as four HOYS qualifying shows for the native ridden classes within a week and apparently some ponies had travelled to them all. Talk about have pony will travel. The same applies to the jockeys who seem to jet about the country to ‘snatch’ a ride. At the Royal Highland, I came across Henry Hird whose mother, Sara, is a keen Highland pony breeder from Kent. Literally days after returning home having spent several months looking after polo ponies in Spain, he had made the trip north to watch Highland ponies at the show on Thursday, returned home to ride his sister’s Scot’s bred Kilmannan Dales pony at Hickstead on Friday, assist at the local NPS area show on Saturday before flying back to Scotland to ride a Highland pony in the HOYS classes on the Sunday. While the last mentioned came nowhere, luckily the effort bore fruit as the Dales pony qualified for HOYS. From a selfish point of view the championship proved to be another Scottish victory when Waxwing Rheel stood head of the line when he qualified for HOYS for the seventh year.