Horsejumping commentary Balmoral Belfast News Letter

News Letter

Alex Lyons, a showjumper from Dublin, describes one of the performances by a rider in the main arena at the Balmoral Show 2025, in bright sunshine on day three of the event, seen from the RUAS pavilion. Video taken by Ben Lowry, editor of the News Letter, on the afternoon of Friday May 16 2025

Transcript

00:00She's coming to the second fence, she's looking to get a nice rhythm and balance

00:03down to an oxer, a little bit of leg, nice bascule over it so she's looking up to her

00:08second fence and where she prepares the horse now into the treble, sits him up in the oxer,

00:12squeeze, vertical, very intense horse, looking what it's doing, down to the second hard oxer,

00:20nice jump over it as well. Looking up to the rest of her horse now with time in mind, down to the

00:27triple bar, she'll need a bit of leg, a bit of speed, sits up lovely, now it's just to get

00:32the horse back on the hocks for the vertical. Next fence there is the oxer into a vertical

00:39with a water tray so the horse will have a little look, no problems there, down to the vertical

00:43and clear. Now she's looking to her next fence which is the oxer, it's 1m 45 wide to another

00:51oxer so plenty of leg, a nice rhythm through the jolt as she continues down to the next

00:57oxer, keeping her in the face, lovely, really well done, down to another vertical line,

01:01double, sits the horse up, loads of canter, well ridden, from Caroline to Triders, to the

01:09next vertical now, time is of the essence so she'll have to try and pick up a little bit

01:12of speed around this track. Well those are fortunes there, the first fence down, 4-4, so the

01:18time is 75.97. So was that because of the fence down? So she had the first fence down so she just

01:24did a nice round to probably school the horse for the big Grand Prix tomorrow which is 1m 50, 1m 55.

01:28And you said that the horses tend to be highly intelligent and therefore they're never the same

01:36as the racehorses. They're completely different yeah, racehorses are for speed but these horses are highly

01:41intelligent to have scopey, they're carful, so you might go through 50 horses and you can get a horse

01:48that can compete at this level, so they're really really special actually.

01:51Two star international classes here.

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