2010 AHHA National Hunter Championships and Castle Hill Twilight Show

 

Skyview Trilogy and Angela Rodham - National Champion Show Hunter over 16hh (Photograph: Coady Photography)

The Annual AHHA National Hunter Championships were held in conjunction with the Castle Hill Twilight Show on 13 – 14 November 2010 and Horsezone were very proud to be one of the major sponsors.

Saturday started with the working hunter classes for the AHHA National Hunter Championships. There were huge numbers in these classes with close to 50 horses vying for the titles of National Champion working hunter pony, galloway or hack. The course featured a set of purpose built working hunter fences featuring a stone wall, brush, gate and picket fence and was expertly judged by Mrs Samantha Watson. The Overall Hi Point Working Hunter horse for the show was Sophie Clift and Waldens Take Two who took home $200 cash, generously donated by regular supporter of AHHA Shows, Horsezone.

Following the working hunter classes, the event then turned to the Castle Hill Twilight Show for the remainder of the Saturday afternoon. The Castle Hill Twilight Show is a regular event in the show horse calendar that has been running for a number of years now. It features a full program of hack, hunter, rider and breed classes and is one of the more popular events in the show calendar. The 2010 show received very good entries – approximately 150 horse and rider combinations – with a lot of riders scrambling to compete to win those last few performances to gain entry into Sydney Royal for 2011.

The program on Sunday returned to show hunter, rider and hack classes to complete the AHHA National Hunter Championships. Good numbers were received for the show, with 112 horse and rider entries including competitors from all over NSW, ACT and even QLD.

While it was not the first year that the AHHA has held a National Show (the AHHA National Show was held at AELEC last year) this is the first year that the show has been held in this format and it was a huge success. This year's show was structured in a format, using top five, National Champion and Runner Up placings instead of 1st-5th placings. This reflected the prestige that the event is acquiring.

Next year it is planned to hold the event again at Castle Hill, in an even bigger format.

The most popular sections this year were the show hunter hack events with some classes having more than 25 entries in them. Judge, Alan Preston, was an inspiration – able to handle classes of this size and work all the horses out in the heat.

Overall, the judges who included Melissa Oven, Jenna Deeg, Genevieve Everingham, Alan Preston, Samantha Watson and Haylee Thurston, were really blown away not only by the quality of the horses, but also the class sizes. The standard was truly Royal Show level, very competitive and placing in the top 5 was a great achievement for competitors.

Alysha Faets on her pony, Patria Chocolate Ripple was a stand out competitor of the day winning the Milbanke Versatility Award ($200 personally donated by S Huntington) for Overall Hi-Point Performance. Alysha won Runner Up National Champion Working Hunter Pony, National Champion Led SH Large Pony, Runner Up National Champion Large SH Pony, as well as winning the AHHA Registered horse and Amateur SH class. A pretty good effort for a girl who completed her HSC only a couple of weeks ago!

Each class winner took home a rug and in most cases a voucher and a garland as well. Sponsorship for this event was huge and the organisers are incredibly indebted to all their sponsors. Suzanne Huntington, Jenny Goodwin, Lyne Fuller, Carol Heuchan and Heather Le Provost also need to be sincerely thanked for all their help in coordinating these two events. They are the true heroes of this story.

The AHHA look forward to seeing everyone again in 2011 for another fantastic show!

CLICK HERE To check out photos from the AHHA National Hunter Championships!