Balmoral Horse Show 2025 – Young Horse Championship win for Tiernan Gill’s Flogas Syb

Day 1 of Balmoral Horse Show ended 27 years of waiting, as popular Mayo exhibitor and Irish Horse Board Chairman Tiernan Gill won the Bluegrass Horse Feed young horse championship with his three-year-old champion Flogas Syb.

Tiernan and his namesake late father are longtime supporters of the show, both at its current Lisburn base and its previous home at the Kings Hall.

“I’ve won reserve five or six times but I’ve never won the championship before,” said Tiernan whose wait ended at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon in the P&O Ferries Arena.

His name will now be added to other winning owners, such as the Houston Bros, the late Stanley Mateer, James McWeeney and John & Sharyn Alexander on the Royal Ulster Rifles Perpetual Challenge Cup, presented to the Balmoral young horse champion.

Gill’s first-time Balmoral champion is by the Dutch-bred Calvino Z, sold to Spy Coast Farm in the United States, while his dam Imette is by the Numero Uno stallion Warrant. Black type performers in her family include the 1.60m showjumpers Zidane, Cassius Clay VDM Z and Mabelle LS.

“He’s going to go jumping, that’s the plan and he has a lot of roads that he can do as he’s so balanced. He’s the most lovely, easy horse and he’s bred to jump. He won Dublin as a yearling, he won Dublin as a two-year-old and we’re hoping to keep going!” he added about the grey, bred in the Netherlands by C.F.M Van Gestel.

“He’s a lovely personality. We’re breaking him at the moment so he’s driving in long reins and he’s going to be very simple to break as he’s so easy. He’s got a lovely attitude and is a big favourite with Susan [McGinty, Gill’s ‘supergroom’] and Johnathon [McDonnell, who produces the Flogas young horses under saddle]. Susan is the best girl ever, she’s brilliant and has a great affection for all the horses but Syb is her favourite!”

Young horse judges Cathy Wood and Chris Hewlett, both making their Balmoral judging debut, were also thinking about future roles for their champion and reserve, which was Dessie Gibson’s Ireland’s Call.

Gibson, another noted exhibitor with a long list of Balmoral wins, won the two-year-old championship with this brown gelding, by the Clinton son Dignified van’t Zorgvliet. Ireland’s Call was bred in Co. Wexford by Joe Walsh and is out of the Desir de Chateau dam Rossa Bibi. Her Limmerick dam Femme Fatale M2S is a half-sister to both the Army Equitation School horse Ringfort Cruise and the Grade A showjumping stallion Renkum Englishman.

“For me, I think the champion and reserve were both real athletes, they had a huge step and the potential to do more. They were athletic enough to be able to go on after the showring, which is always a bonus,” said Wood, who spotted the potential of Paul Tapner’s five-star event horse Stormhill Michael who recorded two top-10 Badminton finishes after a successful in-hand career at county level with Wood.

“They were both just really lovely models,” added Hewlett.

Gill plans to lightly campaign his champion for the rest of the showing season with the All Ireland three-year-old final at Bannow & Rathangan show in July and a bid for a Dublin treble in August.

“He knows his job so we never practice at home, we never need to do anything as he’s just so relaxed.”

Another passenger on board the Flogas lorry for both shows is Pat Finn’s three-year-old filly Frenchfort Kildysart Lady, produced in Gill’s Ballina yard. “She was second in her class today and reserve champion filly. She’s a lovely filly and a very, very good mover. She’s Irish-bred by a horse called Chelis HC Z with a Lux Z mother and was bred by Gerard Grace.”

This year’s Balmoral champion filly was Daphne Tierney’s Bloomfield Westaston, another winner on the day for her sire Dignified van’t Zorgvliet. The dark bay filly was bred by Jane Bradbury and is out of her thoroughbred mare Katoda, by Indian Danehill. Another of Katoda’s half-dozen offspring is the 2022 Balmoral young horse champion Bloomfield Breagura.

That elusive young horse championship won, the winning owner had plans to see more of Balmoral Show which had attracted bumper opening day crowds. “I love to have a look around the show, see all the cattle and machinery. I think it’s fantastic,” said Gill.